Fear Itself
by iamzuul
Summary: Sometimes it's easier to fight someone else's fear than to fight your own. [complete and edited for errors]
1. SECTION ONE

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they were. sigh...

The idea for this came from a combination of an Inuyasha episode and an Extreme Ghostbusters episode. If you know anything about either series, you'll know which ones I'm talking about. I know I should be working on _A King Reborn_ instead of this, but... when the muse demands, there's little you can do to resist.

This story would occur sometime after Homura appears in the plotline, but not before it starts getting obvious that he wants to steal the boy away to make a perfect world. Probably sometime after episode 39, but before episode 44. I loved writing Zenon in this fic. Makes me want to write Zenon-centric fics in the future.

This first chapter may seem stilted, but I had difficulty coming up with a reason as to _why_ they were being hurt this time. The story wanted to go straight into the action, which just wouldn't have worked. I think this will work out. Chapter one can be considered PG-13 for language; no blood or real violence as of yet. Mild spoilers for the god's backgrounds in Heaven.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

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SECTION ONE

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It was still technically day, although the light of the setting sun had turned the sky into a painting of fire - gold before them and the black of a void behind them, a mingling of darkness and light filtering through the canopy above. Sometimes, Zenon thought a good way to describe the scene of a setting sun was death - death of a life, flaring briefly in a pathetic struggle to survive, before finally being overcome by oblivion.

_Damn_, Zenon thought. _That was morbidly poetic_.

Maybe hanging around Homura so much was starting to have an ill effect.

_Nah. An effect, certainly, but not an ill one._

The one-eyed god flicked the ashes from the tip of his cigarette, resting his hand lightly on a nearby tree. No one could ever call Homura normal – completely putting aside the fact that he was a heretic and wanted to destroy the current regime of Heaven, the half-god Zenon traveled with was anything but common. No, to call him that would be like saying the War Prince was sub-par. Homura was...

He tried not to think too much into the reasons behind giving his loyalties to Homura. Thinking too much brought up entirely too painful memories – memories that he would give a piece of himself up to get rid of. _Had_ given a piece of himself up to get rid of, although the results had been somewhat less than gratifying. He followed the prince because he no longer had purpose in life. He followed because he knew the other man could bring an end to Heaven and their hypocritical ways. He followed because Homura was charismatic, powerful, and capable of swaying an army to his side with nothing more than his words. He followed Homura because...

Zenon put the cigarette to his lips and closed his remaining eye.

_Because, had my son lived, he would have been shunned by Heaven as a heretic as well. _

If his son had lived, he would have been proud – more than proud – if the boy had grown up to be anything like Homura. He wondered, sometimes, if the younger god knew Zenon followed because he saw, in those strangely colored eyes, the ghost of the son he once had. If the War Prince did know, he never showed the signs of that knowledge. Zenon was eternally grateful for that.

"Homura."

The dark-haired man turned slightly, just enough that Zenon could see the barest sliver of a blue eye. He had been staring down at the village beneath them for the better part of an hour now – he was used to the heretic god's odd habits, and had learned how to reign in his impatience at doing nothing for hours on end, but right now he was grateful for Shien's quiet interruption. He was starting to run out of cigarettes.

Shien shifted where he stood to Zenon's left, the silk of his ribbons hissing against the shoulders of his robe. In the light of the setting sun he looked sickly, the hollows of his cheekbones and eyes cast into shadow. "What business awaits us in the village below, Homura?" the god asked.

No matter how long he had known the other man, Zenon would always be surprised at how observant Shien was. He saw everything in the world around him, even with his eyes closed. Zenon envied that, sometimes. Had he been more observant, he might have been able to change more things in his past.

But the past was just that: past. He couldn't do anything to change it now.

Homura turned away again, the ends of his cloak billowing in the light breeze that touched the cliff they stood upon. "Do you know what lies west of here?" he asked, the melodious tenor of his voice both curious and bored.

_He's in a thoughtful mood tonight_, Zenon thought. What brought it on this time, he wondered?

"West?" Shien echoed with a touch of confusion.

Zenon smirked and took another drag from his self-proclaimed cancer stick (_As if gods can die from lung cancer – hah!_), exhaling heavily through his nose. " India," he replied lazily.

The look he received from Homura was gently sardonic. He chose not to notice.

"That would be the obvious answer." The tall god looked back towards the valley they stood over. The village beneath them was silent - much too far away for the hustle and bustle of daily lives to reach them. It was easy for the one-eyed god to imagine what it might look like up close, from the top of a roof, from a street corner... all villages and cities looked the same after a time. Especially after seeing them over and over again for five hundred years. Remarkably little had changed in all that time. "But no. That's not what I meant."

Shien stepped forward into the meager light; the dappled shadows from the trees overhead cast an eerie pattern across the pale face, but the dying sun's rays could not pierce the shadows where his eyes lay. "Then please elaborate, Homura. What does lie west of here?"

The god did not answer right away. While normally he was tactfully direct and did not beat around the proverbial bush, Homura could also be aggravatingly indirect when he chose to be. He would tease and hint and deliberately herd one towards the answers without actually giving any of those answers himself. That was how he had approached Zenon with the initial idea of overthrowing the Heavens; it had all started with a theoretical question – _Can the Earth survive without a Heaven? – _and from there he had occasionally thrown out scraps to keep the curiosity raised from that discussion from ever being swept aside.

That was how he dealt with the Sanzo party as well – he stated that he wanted to destroy the Heavens, left the bait, and waited for the others to search for the answer of just _how_ he was going to do that. Made them find the answers _themselves_. They didn't understand yet, and that was good; the boy, Son Goku, was no where near strong enough yet to help them create that perfect world. Zenon could admit, to himself at least, that he wasn't even sure he himself was strong enough for the task that awaited them. Too many doubts and fears plagued his inner soul. He didn't know just how those doubts might affect the battle to come.

But there was only one reason the one-eyed god could think of that would attract Homura to the town below them.

When the man in question did not reply, Zenon sighed and squashed the remains of his cigarette on the bark of the tree he leaned against. "The Sanzo party's in that village, huh?"

Homura only shrugged indifferently, the motion of one shoulder rising and lowering making the chains around his wrists jangle impatiently. "Yes."

"Shall we... intercept them tonight?" Shien's voice was cool and even, level, never inclined to reveal anything he might be feeling. Was he excited about another fight with the reincarnated gods, Zenon wondered? Or was he bored to death, tired of playing with them the way a cat might play with a mouse?

Truth was _he_ was getting pretty exhausted with this game. He wanted to get the damn scripture and just get it _over_ with. He wanted to finally give his family their revenge. He wanted the burning in his brain, behind his eye, to go away. More than anything, he wanted Heaven – and its pathetic population of hypocritical bastards – _gone_. Especially the king bastard of them all, the Jade Emperor. What he would give to see that pompous ass begging Zenon for his life. Squealing for mercy.

That was an honor that would likely go to Homura. But he lusted for the sight all the same.

"No."

Zenon sighed. It was no matter. They would get the scripture eventually. They had all the time in the world.

"Then... what shall we do?" Shien asked.

The sun highlighted Homura's dark hair as he turned toward them, a slight smile twisting his lips. His chains rattled fiercely in the motion. "Have you ever eaten the divine peach of the Merciful Goddess?"

Shien shifted again, a silent shadow at Zenon's side. "It is said that we gods partake of the divine fruit when our souls have attained nirvana," he said. "However, I am uncertain if that time occurs at the beginning of our lives as gods, or at the end. Regardless, they are fiercely guarded, for merely the nectar of the flowers is said to give long life, and a single bite of fruit, immortality."

Homura's smile widened. "An incredible feat, don't you think? Immortality granted by a mere plant. And yet it only makes sense, considering how many plants can bring death with just the prick of a thorn." He glanced over his shoulder, smile fading, back towards the village so many miles away. "There are many different kinds of death. One lies west of here, in the harmless form of a plant. Death in dreams."

"And this is what awaits the Sanzo party?"

The heretic chuckled slightly, one gold eye sliding towards the blind god who stood before him. "Yes."

Well, _that_ was an interesting way to die. But Homura wouldn't let a plant kill the boy; Zenon knew that for a fact. This was another one of his tests, putting the party through the hoops before deciding they were ready for the final challenge. If it were to go _his_ way, Zenon would just steal the _itan_ away and toughen him up in a quicker fashion, rather than with this slow, endless teasing. However, the boy would probably resist harder if they did that. This way, while he was still with his friends, he thought he was fighting against Homura and serving a greater purpose. He had no idea that fighting _for_ Homura would serve a greater purpose still... _and_ get rid of that pesky Gyumaoh problem to boot.

"A plant's going to find it a bit hard to kill these folks," he said baldly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

"I know." Homura did not turn to face his followers again, keeping his eyes on the dark mass past the village, on the horizon, that indicated a forest. The dying fire of the sun turned the distant treetops a muted gold. "I will be disappointed if they fall victim to this adversary."

Beside him, Shien tilted his head slightly. "Then... what is the purpose of this plant?"

"What else?" Zenon could hear the smile in the heretical god's voice, and smiled with him. One way or another, Homura would get what he wanted – what they all wanted. Whether the Heavens wanted it or not. Whether the _seiten taisei_ wanted it or not.

"To make them face their fears," Homura said quietly. "To make them stronger."

---

All he wanted was silence. The kind of silence that excluded human voices. The kind of silence that, even if it was filled with bird song or trees rustling - or, god forbid, _rain _- was vastly preferable to the sound of two retarded demons (well, one-quasi-demon and a half, if he wanted to get technical) squabbling over jerky in the backseat.

_Didn't they eat before we_ left?!

"Goddamnit, did you just _spit_ on that?!"

"It's mine, jackass, so I can spit on it if I want to!"

"The hell it is! That's for all of us! Didn't your monk ever teach you to share?"

Hakkai smiled widely beside him, far too happy with the world at large to be perturbed by the scene in the back of the jeep. "They're active rather early, don't you think?"

Sanzo grunted, closing his eyes and thrusting his hands up his sleeves. One palm rested lovingly on the butt of his pistol. "I'm about ready to _de_activate them. Permanently."

"Have you even thought about saving some of that for lunch, monkey boy?"

"Why? Didn't you say you lived on cigarettes and beer?"

"_Yeah_, but that shit'll only last for so long. You need a little variety in your life. You know, red-heads, brunettes, blondes..."

Sanzo's finger twitched on the trigger of said pistol.

"Don't you ever think about anything _besides_ women?"

"Don't you ever think about anything _besides_ food and beating up demons? You could use a little spice in _your_ life, monkey. I swear, I've never seen your libido extend past meat buns and fried noodles. And to think you spent all those years stuck in a building with nothing but men - you should have picked up _something_. Unless, of course, _Sanzo_ - "

Said pistol was out and clicking between Gojyo's teeth before Hakkai could think to stop the monk.

"Finish that sentence and _die_," Sanzo hissed.

Goku burst out in laughter, one arm wrapped around his stomach and the other clutching a piece of half-gnawed jerky. He appeared oblivious to the undercurrents of the conversation. "_Shit_, Gojyo! You look like you just pissed yourself!"

"Try not to get any blood on the upholstery, Sanzo," Hakkai warned cheerfully.

The redhead mumbled something that was understandably slurred due to the gun between his lips. Sanzo sat back and turned around in his seat, wiping the barrel off on his sleeve. "What did you say?"

"I said that gun must be some kind of penis extension for you. Why else would you shoot it off and stick it in people's mouths all the time? When was the last time you got laid, man?"

Hakkai sighed and leaned his head back, resigned to the fact that he was likely to go deaf in his left ear (both from gunshots fired way too close and from Sanzo's preference for raunchy insults) before too much longer. He couldn't help but smile, despite the screaming issuing from the back seat.

"Looks like it's going to be another one of those days, eh, Hakuryuu?"

"Kyuu!"

---

Lunchtime usually brought its own share of problems, but Gojyo was still stinging from the number of close calls he had with Sanzo's gun. Instead of causing more mischief, the redhead had chosen to park himself against a tree by Hakkai, hands linked lazily behind his head as he watched his cigarette smoke dissipate into the sky. Despite Gojyo's decided lack of interaction with Goku, Hakuryuu kept his master safely between himself and the half-demon. He had probably received a few too many close calls with Sanzo's gun himself.

"Do you think the innkeeper was lying?" Goku asked around a mouthful of ramen.

Hakkai lowered his chopsticks, glancing over at the younger man. The older gentleman who ran the inn they stayed at had been quite frightened about the rumor of demons prowling the woods around the small village - and indeed, it was a story corroborated by many townsfolk. Tales of people disappearing in the middle of the night, with no sign of a struggle - younger people, in those cases - or vanishing during the journey between this village and the one further west, which was only a day away on foot, never to be seen again. Everyone was certain that demons haunted these woods - and yet Hakkai could not be certain he sensed any demonic presence. All the same... something about these woods felt... off.

"I don't know," he said finally. "These are frightening times. Anything that goes wrong could possibly be blamed on non-existent demons."

Goku set aside his empty bowl and leaned his elbows on his knees, expression both intense and innocently curious. "So you don't sense anything either?"

"These are awfully dense woods." Gojyo removed a hand from behind his head, pulled his cigarette out from between his teeth, and gestured widely around the small group. They had pulled over at the side of the path, where the road had widened enough to allow light through the branches overhead. Trees and underbrush ruled every place except for where the packed dirt of the path ran, casting dark shadows even during the height of day. Kudzu vine thickened the mixture, the impossibly large leaves giving what little sunlight that made it through the trees a sickly green cast. Visibility was compromised only a few feet into the forest. "If anyone was to wander off the main track they'd probably be lost for days. Depending on how large the forest is, they might never find their way back to the path."

Sanzo stubbed out the remains of his cigarette against his bowl, pulling out another from the ever-present pack in his back pocket. He placed the new one between his lips without lighting it. "How does that explain the people vanishing in the dead of night?"

"Trysts." The half-demon tapped away some ashes and leaned back on his free hand. "Just some kids heading out for some midnight nookie and getting lost on their way back. Probably got ate by a bear or something. Besides, the guy said that hasn't happened for a couple of months."

"That would explain the lack of _youryoku_." Hakkai offered the remainder of his lunch to the small dragon at his side, which was enthusiastically accepted. "And if there really were demons in these woods, they probably would have been seen... and left evidence of their kills."

"Most aren't smart enough to bother hiding the bodies," Gojyo agreed.

Goku didn't look entirely convinced, but he had always been overly eager to engage in fights. Hakkai would have thought the boy would get enough from constantly bickering with Gojyo - but then again, he couldn't actually _kill_ the water demon...

"Regardless." The blonde priest fished out his lighter and touched the flame to the end of his cigarette, inhaling deeply. He snapped closed the Zippo and stashed it back in his robe. "We aren't here to play hero. We're just going through the damn woods. If we happen to run across any demons, we'll take care of them. Otherwise it's not our problem."

"For once I'm in agreement with you." With a sigh the red head pushed himself to his feet, bracing himself against the tree. "I don't really feel like going back to that town – the bar had piss-poor beer. The waitresses weren't exactly hot, either."

"I dunno... I thought the _sukiyaki_ was pretty good. Wouldn't mind some of it right now..."

"Damnit, monkey! Don't you dare start whining about food right after you've eaten!"

"But Sanzo, that wasn't even a real meal!"

Hakkai smiled up at Gojyo as he pushed himself to his feet, the empty bowls of their meal stacked in one hand. "Time to get going," he said cheerfully over the sounds of Sanzo harassing Goku with his _harisen_.

"Yup." The half-demon stuck the cigarette back in his mouth and squinted up at the canopy. "You know, this place may be harmless enough, but it still weirds me out. I'd like to get out of here as quickly as possible."

"Agreed." Hakkai sent Hakuryuu back to the road, and dragon obligingly transformed back into his jeep form. "I can't sense any demons, but I do think I sense _something_. Either we're not close enough yet, or it's disguising its presence."

Sanzo managed to deliver one more swat before Goku ran for the safety of Hakuryuu's backseat. He stuffed the fan back up his sleeve and glanced towards the other two. "There _is_ something in here, make no mistake of that. But like I said, we're not here to play hero. We keep moving unless whatever it is gets in our way. We should reach the edge of the forest in an hour or two."

"Coupla hours, huh?" Gojyo linked his hands behind his head and made his way towards the awaiting jeep. "The next town we run into better have some damn good beer to make up for the suckiness of this last pit stop. So let's get going, shall we?"

---

_Coupla hours, huh? Fuck. Should have figured something would go wrong._

Gojyo leaned his head back against the rough bark of the tree, struggling to bring his breathing back to a controllable level. His hands were slick with sweat, making it difficult to maintain a good grip on his _shakujou_.

He still wasn't entirely sure what was happening – the attack had occurred so quickly that he'd barely had time to whip his weapon out of the dimensional limbo he was just demonic enough to access. Not that he hadn't had the time to assess the situation: he'd sensed the flash of searing whip, seen Homura's mocking smile, heard the retort of gunfire that was far too fast to be Sanzo. The strange part was the absolute lack of banter. No "I'm here for the sutra and nice enough to give you _another_ chance to give it up willingly," or "Are you strong enough yet, Son Goku?" Just a textbook ambush, weapons out and guns firing willy-nilly.

Gojyo had sensed them in just enough time to avoid the initial gun fire. An unnatural rustle of branches, the sudden silence of the insects, his sixth sense raising the hairs on the back of his neck – something, he wasn't sure what. Goku had probably smelled them coming – monkey boy had been out of the seat even before he managed to tumble onto the road. Sanzo and Hakkai...? He didn't know. He'd heard Sanzo's cursing and the distinctive firing of his pistol for quite some time, as well as Hakkai's _chi_ blasts, but Gojyo had been dodging trees and gunfire and kudzu vines for so long that he had no clue how far away he was from the path.

_Fuck_.

He held his breath, taking a moment to wipe the palm of one hand on the leg of his jeans, struggling to listen past the rapid-fire beating of his heart in his ears. Nothing – not the sound of approach or bird song, or even branches rustling together in a breeze. Absolute silence.

"Creepy," he muttered.

Well, first thing was first: he needed to get back to the path. Which, he supposed, was easier said than done; the forest was so dense that sunlight only barely managed to filter through, lowering visibility to something akin to twilight. He also wouldn't be able to make a move without touching _something_ – if Zenon hadn't lost track of his target, then he'd be able to find said target quickly enough once it started moving again.

And, to make matters worse, Gojyo wasn't entirely sure which direction the path lay. Behind him, obviously, but 'behind' covered an awfully large area.

_Guess I shouldn't have made those cracks about villagers getting lost and eaten by bears, huh?_

He transferred his weapon to the other hand, wiping his free hand off and fishing out his pack of cigarettes and lighter. One deep inhalation of nicotine and he felt at least mildly capable of taking on a god again. Probably wasn't the best for his lungs, but it was that or his nerves. You only needed one lung to survive anyways, right?

Gojyo pushed himself off the tree and turned around, tensed to begin another cross-country dash if Zenon hopped out from behind a bush and starting firing again.

Something stung his calf, and immediately began to itch something awful.

"Damn bugs –"

Abruptly his sight tilted, and Gojyo lost his cigarette when he flung out one arm to try and regain his balance. The tree he was aiming to lean against seemed very far away... but hadn't he just stepped away from it? Breathing was suddenly difficult – a band constricting his lungs, squeezing his throat to the width of a straw – and the itching on his calf turned to burning turned to fire turned to fucking _agony_. Like something was eating his leg.

The world tilted in the other direction, and between one blink and another Gojyo found himself on the forest floor, sprawled out against the coarse tangle of rubbery vines and broad hairy leaves – _When did that get there?_ – and biting his lip to avoid screaming at the fire burning through his veins.

He decided that he didn't particularly like the idea of breathing with only one lung. But then the light dimmed, and he didn't have to worry about breathing anymore.

_---_

_A/N: Don't worry. You don't _honestly_ believe I'd kill any of the boys, do you? _


	2. SECTION TWO

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they were. sigh...

While I enjoyed writing the angst and the blood for this part, it wasn't very easy. Particularly Hakkai's part; I've read fiction that has included kudzu before, and yet it was never described in detail. I had some serious issues looking up data on the plant because of internet troubles at the time, and not being able to put in details hung me up for a while. I never realized what a pest it has become in the southern states, 'cause I live much further south than where it grows. Writing this story makes me want to take a trip up to Georgia just to see it!

The rating of the story goes up from PG-13 to R from here, for language and violence. Contains major spoilers for episodes 6 and 7, and makes brief mention of the demonic tree in episode 13.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

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SECTION TWO

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Hakkai had lost his dragon, and he wasn't particularly pleased about that. Especially since he thought Hakuryuu had taken a bullet during the first few seconds of the ambush, and he wasn't too sure how a wound in jeep form would affect the gentle creature. Either way, he had left the dragon on the path to their destination and hadn't been able to get back to the road since. That didn't make him too happy.

Neither was he thrilled at having lost contact with his comrades. He couldn't hear Sanzo's pistol anymore, or Gojyo's cursing, or Goku's ultimately unnecessary but comforting battle screams. He hadn't seen any of them for at least ten minutes, immediately after exiting the jeep and entering the underbrush, and hadn't heard them for well over three minutes. And it was obvious to him that he was being herded _away_ from the path – every time Hakkai made to move back the way he came, zigzagging as it had been, Shien would appear and snap his whips. Said whips were too strong for Hakkai to shield against and run away from at the same time, and so retreating only made sense in that situation. Especially since the god would disappear once he starting moving again. It was an excellent example of divide and conquer, and that wasn't something Hakkai particularly liked – not when _he_ was the one being divided, anyways.

No, he wasn't happy that he'd lost his dragon, his friends, and his freedom of movement. But what really 'cooked his goose', as Gojyo would say, was that he had just lost his monocle.

_Today just hasn't been my day, has it?_

Nothing moved in the jungle of plants around him, not even the wind. The air had quickly become stifling, thick and heavy and humid. Hakkai had been resting long enough to get his breathing under control again, but breathing itself seemed just that tad too difficult – like a suffocating weight was resting on his chest. The right side of his vision was hopelessly blurred, turning the surrounding forest into a mishmash of indistinct greens and browns, and he knew he wouldn't have the chance to react if Shien attacked from that direction.

He leaned to his left, peering around the tree he was resting against. The bark was dry and rough against his palms, and smelt like clean earth and leaf mold. There was nothing back the way he came except for trees, more trees, the strangling density of underbrush, and the dark green vines of the kudzu. The damn thing was _everywhere_, he had noticed, woven through the canopy like a strange tapestry; he wondered why it hadn't smothered more trees and allowed sunlight into the darkness beneath the canopy. His tree was one of the few that hadn't been buried beneath the thick vines and broad, spade-shaped leaves. But regardless of how innocuously quiet the woods appeared, somewhere back there the god was hiding - seeing everything through closed eyes, apparently content to allow Hakkai to stay where he was but ready to attack the instant the demon tried to rejoin his comrades.

Hakkai shifted slightly and rested his forehead against the bark of the tree, closing his eyes. He could only think of one reason for Homura to try this tactic – to separate Sanzo from the others and capture the monk's sutra. Sanzo was tough, but his pistol had no direct affect against a god, and Hakkai wasn't too sure the Maten-kyomen could work against anything other than demons. It probably wouldn't take much effort for Homura to just reach out and pluck the scripture away.

And there was also Goku. Goku would fight to the death to protect Sanzo, and there were only two other gods besides Homura. Zenon could only hold off one person, and Hakkai highly doubted that god would try squaring off with Goku. No, Zenon was probably keeping Gojyo occupied, leaving Homura with the two people he obviously enjoyed toying with the most. But for what reason? Was he here to goad the golden-eyed boy with more "Become stronger" lines, or would he possibly try to kidnap the youth (again)? Or at the very worst... kill him?

Hakkai frowned and straightened, his bangs catching against the bark. One thing _was_ certain – he needed to get back to the path, to where this damn ambush had started, to where his friends might need his help. The silence unnerved him something awful; he wished he could hear _something_ other than the sound of the branches overhead rubbing against each other, even if it was nothing more than the irritating _chirr_ of a beetle. He didn't like the idea of Gojyo or Sanzo lying somewhere in this green emptiness, maybe bleeding to death, desperately needing his help –

Well, that decided it. He had to find a way to slip past Shien and get back to the path. If he had to let a few hits get through his barrier in order to keep moving, he would just have to deal with the pain. He would rather die than let any of his friends get hurt because he wasn't trying hard enough to get past an obstruction.

Hakkai leaned to his left again to peer around the tree, hoping Shien had possibly gotten bored of this game and left.

Instead, he almost put his eye out on a kudzu leaf.

He jerked backward out of reflex, awkwardly focusing on the broad, pale leaf. It stirred slightly in the breeze, larger than both his hands put together. The dark vine it sprouted from clung tightly to the bark of the tree, tiny roots seeping into the crevices and hanging on with an iron-like grip. In fact, the whole tree was suddenly covered with the stuff, except for the side he was on, drowning out the mottled brown of the trunk with a sea of hairy green foliage.

_What the hell?!_

Hakkai took a slow step backwards, pulling away from the tree without actually removing his hands from the bark. The silence only seemed to wrap closer around him – nothing else was moving except for him and the sudden growth of kudzu, the leaves of which shifted and stirred against each other with the currents of air.

Except there _was_ no breeze – his hair stuck to his neck and forehead with sweat, and never once did a breath of air drift by to cool him. The kudzu was moving _by itself_.

_This is it_, he realized suddenly. _This is the not-presence I've been feeling ever since we entered the forest. It's not a demon, it's a _plant_. They're alive, but not sentient – they act purely on instinct, the instinct to survive, with no thoughts or emotions..._

A thin tendril with pale green leaf buds slithered down the trunk, moving with the gawky quickness of a growing plant on fast-forward. Every few inches it seemed to pause, and the buds would sprout, expanding into new leaves that began to turn and shift as though looking for the sun. One bud lengthened to a spear of tiny buds almost six inches long before it split and revealed the delicate purple petals of dozens of blossoms, which were quickly hidden by the larger leaves. The scent of grapes strongly assaulted his nose.

How fast did he have to move in order to escape this thing? Did it react to sudden movements? How did it sense him? Shit, how the hell could he get _away_ from it? It was everywhere!

Hakkai slowly began to pull his hands away from the tree. The kudzu vine got there first, bursting into vicious growth, wrapping around his right wrist in one lightning fast movement. He immediately jerked back against it, and the thin vine offered no resistance, snapping instantly.

Then the whole plant came alive.

Hakkai turned and ran without another thought. A _chi_ blast would probably be quite effective at this point, but summoning up his waning reserves of energy would slow him down, and slowing down would get him caught by that _thing_. What the hell _was_ it? Some kind of demented cousin of the _ninjingka_? Even the _ninjingka_ tree had given off more spiritual sense than this mutated vine, but if the thing that hissed and roared behind him like a miniature waterfall was anything like that cursed plant, he didn't really want to stick around for lunch. Or dinner, or any other meal, actually. He liked his _chi_ right where it was, thankyouverymuch.

He didn't have a chance to go very far before he fetched up against a writhing sea of green spade-shaped leaves, a nest of rubbery vines that extended past his vision on either side and surged all the way up into the canopy. He couldn't get past it, or around it; there was no point in running from something when he was so effectively blocked off. So he reached down into his _chi_, touched the point of light deep inside that crackled with restrained energy, and let it flow through his veins and nerves and fingers into the palm of his hand.

The effect of a _chi_ blast was actually quite successful. The vines seemed to disintegrate at the slightest touch, leaving a large hole where a green wall had once resided, blackened edges smoking in a decidedly pleasing manner. Hakkai never once paused in his gait, never paused to catch his breath, for that _thing_ was still hot on his heels, hissing like a distressed serpent; he ran, reached the edge of the smoking hole, made to jump through –

Something heavy collided with his back and head and bore him to the ground. Leaves and sticks and writhing vines pillowed his impact, and darkness surrounded him. He was pinned by something large and only barely yielding, allowing him to struggle but not get up. He couldn't get his hands underneath him to push himself up – he could find no purchase on the vines below. They twisted and slid beneath his hands, curled around his fingers. He could feel one particularly large vine wrap around his thigh and _squeeze_, cutting off the circulation to his leg.

_Jesus Christ – the damn thing _fell_ on me!_

He tried to gather his _chi_ again, to blast the darkness in front of him to smithereens, to at least get a chance to _sit up_, but something stung his shoulder, a sting that rapidly escalated from an itch to a burn that swept through his back like a wave of fire. There was another sting, on his thigh, on his wrist, on his stomach, on his right cheek – and when the fire raced over his skull and into his eye and into his brain and burnt him alive on the inside, Hakkai only had enough time to realize

_ This was what Homura was planning_

before oblivion took him away from the pain.

---

There was blood on his robes.

The stench of something long dead was so far up his nose that Sanzo didn't think he'd ever be able to smell anything else again. Holding his breath didn't work; eventually his lungs would start to burn and his vision would fade to black at the edges and a high-pitched whine would echo between his ears – but before he could pass out his lungs squeezed tight and forced him to exhale. He would just have to take another breath at that point, no matter how long he forced himself not to. If he didn't breath through his nose he wouldn't smell that... that _death_ – but instead would taste it on his tongue, moldy on the roof of his mouth and the back of his throat, and somehow that was much, much worse.

There was blood on his robes, and on his hands, and even if he had the strength to try Sanzo didn't think he'd be able to wash it all off.

_ There are many holy names that I could choose for you, Koryuu, but few would carry as much weight as this one. This has been given to many of the men who bore the scriptures, all of them great in their own ways. _

_ How many men, osho-sama? _

_ Thirty, to be exact. _

_ That's an awful lot of men. Surely only a handful should have carried the scriptures? If it's been just a few hundred years since the Maten and Seiten scriptures were given to the same caretaker - _

_ Then perhaps only a hundred monks at most could have been the heirs to the five sutras of Heaven and Earth? _

_ Yes. _

_ The weight of the scriptures is a heavy one, Koryuu. A weight... that can be too heavy for some to bear._

How heavy had it been, he wondered, for such a young man to have so many gray hairs on his head? _Osho-sama_ hadn't been old – not as old as the abbot, anyway – but the lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth did not evince his inclination for smiling so much as they did his mental age. How heavy had the Maten- and Seiten-kyomen been for him, to turn his silky brown hair into a faded mockery of youth? How was he able to keep smiling?

_Osho-sama_ had smiled at everything, even at death. Sanzo had never understood how a simple smile could comfort a man grieving for a wife lost in childbirth, or a woman mourning for a husband lost in battle. Death was final. Death was eternal. Smiling at death did not make everything better.

There was blood splashed over his master's face, drying in the seams of age around his mouth. _Osho-sama_ wasn't smiling at death this time.

Something was broken behind his eyes. Something that burned and tickled at the same time, not quite painful enough to break through this... this... emptiness. Nothingness. There was blood sprayed over the tiles of the bedroom like water from a carelessly dropped glass, black as night against the pale robes that tangled over the once graceful form that was now nothing more than a broken doll. Not even the gold crown was free of that... that... stain.

_Osho-sama_ was dead. Dead because of him.

Why had he frozen? Why had his legs turned to ice at the moment his gaze met the slit-pupil eyes that glared through the broken screen? Even if he didn't have the sutra memorized he could have... have _fought_, have done _something_, even if it was as cowardly as running away. He knew how to fight. He knew how to defend himself. _Why hadn't he been able to move?_

Why hadn't _osho-sama_ chosen to recite the sutra, instead of protecting Sanzo's body with his own?

There was blood on his hands from when the demon had hacked into _osho-sama's_ frail frame, slicing open the fragile life like a fish to be gutted and thrown aside. He could still feel where it had sprayed on his face, hot as candle wax before it cooled and dried.

_I couldn't save him. _

_I couldn't... couldn't even save myself._

Something was broken behind his eyes, and it burned like fire in his sinuses and down the back of his throat. How could he have failed like this? The one thing that was most precious to him, more important than his own life... was...

Past the broken screen through which the demons had come and gone raged the storm. It had never really stopped, never given a moment's respite, flooding the compound and battering down the gardens on which the diet of the monks depended. On the pale and shattered rice-paper screening there were muddy tracks from feet both shod and unshod, defiling the room Sanzo had once thought was so sacred. Here was where _osho-sama_ had prayed and taught and slept. Here was where he had lived, and Sanzo had never thought one life's actions could be so significant, even in the most mundane of ways.

Here was where _osho-sama_ had lived.

_Had_ lived.

_Osho-sama_ was dead.

Koumyou Sanzo was dead.

_Dead_.

Someone was screaming. Something was burning. Past the rain and lightning and the heart beating in his ears he could hear the sounds of slaughter in the temple halls, the sound of steel striking wood after it had passed through the brittle bones of a neck or an arm, severing limbs, severing lives. Skilled in martial arts the monks might have been, but they couldn't stand up against these _things_. Not even _osho-sama_ could.

And he... he hadn't even tried to stand up to them. He had just... stood there. Frozen. _Weak_.

The door to the room rattled fiercely when something was thrown against it with a meaty _thud_, but it did not give way.

Sanzo clenched his hands, felt the dried blood crack and peel away between his fingers and the folds of his palms. They were such small hands. How could he have ever been so bold, so _arrogant_, as to think that he could hold a life within these hands and keep it from burning out? How could he get up and try to protect the monks outside the walls of this room from the demons who had come back for the Maten scripture if he couldn't even protect the _one thing that mattered most?_

Teardrops discolored the sleeves of his robe, and he closed his eyes tightly to prevent any more from escaping.

_I couldn't save him._

Claws scraped against the wooden door, searching for the latch, seeking to draw it open and enter the room. The screaming still hadn't stopped, but it was further away now, distant, and fainter. It wouldn't be long before everyone was dead. Including him. Dead like _osho-sama._ Soon his blood would stain these floors, and wouldn't that be justice? He had failed to protect his master, failed to protect the Seiten scripture that would eventually become his own. It was only proper that he be punished and have the Maten scripture taken from him as well.

_ The weight of the scriptures is a heavy one, Koryuu. A weight... that can be too heavy for some to bear. _

This burden _was_ too much for such a weak child. _He_ was too weak. Too weak to –

_ burning in his veins, cramping his muscles, searing his eyes, eating away at his lungs _

Sanzo forced his eyes open, staring at his hands. Was that what death would feel like? Instant and quick, there and gone like a lightning bolt before fading into the night, or lingering, painful, and –

_ couldn't move, couldn't see, couldn't feel anything except that searing fire in his gut and the weight against his_

eternal

_ loam and green foliage his cheek was pressed against_

forever

_ fragrant, heady, like grapes_

_dead_.

No.

This wasn't right. Something wasn't right.

The door scraped against its tracks as it was slowly dragged open.

Sanzo unclenched his hands and spread his fingers, exposing the half-moon marks where his nails had bit into the skin of his palms. This wasn't right – the demons hadn't come back. They had slaughtered Koumyou Sanzo, laughing as their bloodied fingers plucked the Seiten scripture from off the slender shoulders, disappearing back into the rainy night _without_ a promise to return. The Maten scripture had been in the cupboard – _osho-sama_ had asked him to retrieve it just as the icy trickle of _youryoku_ had touched his spine and the demons had broken through the screening.

They hadn't returned while he was still here. He had taken the Maten-kyomen from the cupboard and left before Koumyou's blood had even been lifted from the tiles of the once sacred room.

A footstep whispered across the threshold.

Shuuei – Rikudo – he had used the curse of Araya to defeat the demons when they had returned for the Maten scripture. But Sanzo... he had left long before, descending the steps of the mountain and heading off into the woods in the pursuit of justice and revenge. But all the while those demons had been just a step behind him, and now the Kinzan Temple and everyone who had once resided there was gone.

Except for him. And he still had the Maten scripture, despite the numerous attempts of demons to steal it. If he couldn't protect the Seiten scripture and life of its caretaker, then he damn well wasn't going to give up this sutra as well.

The Kinzan Temple was _gone_. He wasn't _here_ – here didn't even exist any more. He was... was...

Where was he?

/ ..._where are you... /  
_

The hissing ring of a sword being removed from its scabbard.

/ ..._you promised... /  
_

_something brushed against his cheek. it smelled like _

Where _was_ he, if not here, if not in this accursed nightmare?

_grapes_

_/ ...where are you... /  
_

_A kudzu blossom_.

_ / ...find me... /  
_

It was there – just beyond his senses, like a painting at the bottom of lake. This wasn't the reality. This was the water through which the painting was seen, distorting the truth and twisting the facts into a nightmare far more horrible than reality. The water was turning the truth into a weapon that could be turned against him.

This was nothing more than a trick.

Sanzo clenched his hands again, and this time he could feel the dirt scraping against his fingertips, even if he couldn't see it. There were vines writhing against his arms, against his neck, and pain blossomed from his stomach. The hissing of the rain outside the screening became the whispering of hundreds of leaves rubbing against each other. His reading glasses were pressed uncomfortably against his sternum.

This place didn't exist. This room, this bloody fucking _nightmare_ was nothing more than a memory being turned against him. The smell of dirt was real. The sensation of pain was real. The sense of the Maten-kyomen brushing against his ear was real. The blood was not. The rain was not.

The emptiness in his chest quickly filled with the tightness of anger. Someone was going to pay for this.

_I failed once by being weak. I will not fail by being weak again!_

Sanzo rolled to his right as the invisible attacker brought down the blade, feeling the air being cut apart as the sword whistled only inches from his shoulder. Blood smeared underneath his hands and bare feet as he scrambled to stand, but he forced the sensation away. The blood wasn't real. The rain pounding overhead wasn't real. He had to stay focused on the rasp of phantom vines curling across his arms and the scent of grapes from phantom blossoms. That was where he _really_ was.

But the smell of blood was overpowering.

A brief flash of lightning lit up the demon and its cat-like eyes. There were no features on its face, only a dark black mass where a mouth and nose should have been and yet were not. And then there was only a looming figure in the darkness with pale blue eyes that burned with murderous intent. He could see broad shoulders twitch as the demon wrenched its sword out from where it had embedded in the floor, and light from the demonic eyes gleamed dully on the weapon's polished surface.

He had to find a way to get out of this dream. But how? Sanzo tried desperately to hold on to the other-world sensations, but they slipped away from between his fingers. Fear was replacing the anger that had bubbled up before – he could no longer smell the scent of the kudzu blossom over the death that filled the room.

The demon lurched forward a step, a low growl issuing from its chest.

_ / ...I'm cold... /  
_

Sanzo backed up a step, slipped in the puddle of congealing blood, recovered himself. He needed a weapon –

His fingers closed around empty air when he reached for his pistol, and for a moment he could only stare, dumbfounded, at his bare arm. Of course; he had not yet received the banishing gun. It was still stored away in a locked closet, where all the weapons that the monks were forbidden to have in the first place were hidden away. In this dream, it did not exist. In this dream, he was still a child, weak and cowardly from his close encounter with death. This dream was not the truth, but neither was it a lie.

Another step brought the faceless attacker to the hem of _osho-sama's_ robe, and Sanzo could see the clawed toes stand out in sharp relief against the pale silk.

_ / ...hungry... /  
_

He had to focus on what was real. But what _was_ real? What could he concentrate on to break the hold this dream had on him? What could he use as a weapon?

_ / ...promised... /  
_

That was it. Goku, he was real – in this dream, he was still locked away in the mountain, calling plaintively in a voice he didn't even realize he had. Sanzo had first heard him not long after he had descended the mountain, only days after his master's death, but it had taken him years before the niggling cry in the back of his mind finally drove him to go shut that voice up. And then the boy had looked up at him with those wide, golden, _stupid_ eyes, and he couldn't find it in him to smack the child. Goku hadn't even been aware of what he was doing; it didn't make sense to punish someone who was involved in an action outside of their control.

_ / ...find me... /  
_

That was real. Even if it hadn't actually happened at this point in his memories – though neither the demon he was currently facing nor the slaughter he heard had happened, either – it was a solid truth he could cling to. In his dream, Goku was still out there, and even if he didn't realize what he was doing, Sanzo could use that voice as a lifeline to reality. It reminded him that there _was_ a way out of this room and nightmare; outside, there was a mission and a team charged with stopping a demonic revival and retrieving a missing sutra. There was a human-turned-demon, a lecherous water sprite, an ageless child, and a magical dragon/jeep waiting outside this dream.

He just had to _wake up_.

_ smelled like grapes_

The demon chuckled and hefted its sword. Sanzo could make out the oily swirl of blood – _osho-sama's blood?_ – congealing on the surface that had, only second before, been polished. He continued to back up until his shoulders hit the handles of the cupboard.

_ leaves hissing together _

_ / ...hurts... /  
_

_Wake up, damn you! _

_ winding across his back, brushing the scripture against his neck _

_ / ...find me... /  
_

That was it.

The sutra. The sutra existed in his dream.

Sanzo whirled around and wrapped his bloody fingers around the pale-grained handles of the cupboard. He could hear the demon's roar of triumph as he presented his back, a welcome target; even as he threw open the doors he could sense it lurching forward, raising its sword, the crimson-silver blade cutting a deadly arc through the air, the sharpened edge seeking to embed itself in his back. He wouldn't have enough time to recite the sutra before the blade reached its mark.

_ / ...found you... /  
_

Light exploded from the darkness between the doors of the cupboard. For an instant, he thought he saw two small hands reaching out towards him from the blinding brightness.

And then Sanzo woke up.


	3. SECTION THREE

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they were. sigh...

I admit that this is little more than a filler, but it needed to be written. Getting the events that occurred between Sanzo's eavesdropping here and in the next chapter to correspond was harder than I thought it would be. Ooooh, foreshadowing for Goku's nightmare. Dum dum DUM dum!

The rating of this chapter could be considered PG-13, as there is really only bad language and mention of violence.

---

---

_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

---

---

SECTION THREE

---

---

Pain was the first thing that registered to his senses – a fire that spread outward from his abdomen and left ashes in its wake. Sanzo was lying on his stomach, and that only seemed to make the pain worse. He tried to open his eyes, but a great weight had descended upon them, pulling them down. It was nothing more than sheer force of will that got them to open even half way, and he nearly lost the fight when the incoming rays of light threatened to blind him.

That was when he noticed the dry, itching mass against his neck and cheek. He raised one hand – muscles trembling, a motion hard-fought and dearly won – to brush the object away. Something brittle crumbled beneath his fingers.

_What the fuck happened?_

He could still remember the dream, a nightmare in all its ethereal realness. He almost expected to see blood when he opened his eyes, but was more than relieved to see the leaf-strewn floor of a forest instead. But _why_ did he have that dream? Why was he sprawled on his stomach on a forest floor? And why the hell did he feel so weak and drained?

Sanzo put his hand back on the loam and managed to lever himself into a half-sitting position. Branches and dry debris slid off his back and hit the ground with a hissing crash. The leaves were brown and withered beyond recognition, but still attached to the vines they had grown from. One vine had been caught beneath him when he – fell? tripped? – caught on the weave of his robes and –

No. Not caught. _Impaled_. There wasn't much blood, but he could see that the robe had been torn by... thorns or something... the vine passing through the silk and the thin leather of his inner shirt. Taking a moment to make sure he wouldn't fall over once he took away the brace of his arms, Sanzo pulled aside the robe to assess the damage.

Like the rest of the vine, this one was dead; brown and withered, bits of it crumbling away when his hands or clothing brushed against it. Didn't look any different, either – except for the important fact that it had somehow injured him. He grasped the stalk and gently pulled – pain tore through his abdomen, causing the muscles to spasm. He just gritted his teeth and pulled harder.

The plant tore away from his flesh with a disgusting ripping noise, part of the vine crumbling in his hand. At the end of the vine was a wide sucker that reminded Sanzo of nothing more than the mouth of a leech. With teeth.

He tossed away the dead foliage and braced himself on one arm. So... this thing was somehow the culprit. Vaguely he could remember an attack on the jeep that had driven him apart from Goku, Gojyo, and Hakkai, sending him deep into the forest. He had paused a moment to rest... and then...? The dream. He had no recollection of an attack, only the eerie silence of the forest and the

_smells like grapes_

strong odor of kudzu blossoms.

And there was the evidence surrounding him: dozens of limp vines and hundreds of withered leaves now littered the forest floor. The canopy overhead had been stripped bare, and above him the face of a full moon lit the new clearing.

His last clear memory was of lunchtime banter. Now the day had already progressed into the dead of night.

"Fuck," he said. His voice was hoarse and it took too much effort to breathe.

The kudzu vine was somehow alive... mutated or ensorcelled in a way that caused it to attack anyone who entered the forest – like the villagers who had been so certain that a demon haunted the woods. Sanzo wasn't entirely sure if it had been planning to suck him dry in the same manner as a leech, but he _was_ sure that it had done _something_ to him. Poison was still an option; the burning on his stomach had not ceased with the removal of the sucker, and everything felt sore to the touch. Even his nails hurt. And his vision refused to stay completely focused, blurring unnecessarily at the edges. He felt incredibly, horribly tired.

But Homura was still out there. Where Shien and Zenon were, the war prince ultimately followed. If he didn't get up, it would only be a matter of time before he was found by either the gods or more of that plant.

To his left lay his discarded _shoureijyuu,_ and he carefully leaned over to pick it up. It was still fully loaded. However the kudzu had come upon him, it had done so too fast for him to react. Apparently he hadn't even had the time to shoot. So this time he would have to be more careful, and much more alert. Somehow the Maten scripture had been cast while he was in the depths of that surreal nightmare, but he knew he didn't have the strength to do so deliberately again. At least it hadn't been stolen from him while he had been under the kudzu vine's spell. The only weapon he had left to him now was the speed of his feet and the bullets in his gun.

His vision blurred again as he stared at the weapon in his hands, and he absently dug his knuckle into one eye to help alleviate the stinging. His fingers came away wet.

_Tears. From that dream._

"Fuck," he said again, and scrubbed angrily at his eyes and cheeks until he was reasonably sure that no evidence remained.

This wasn't going to be very pleasant.

---

Sanzo didn't know how long it took him to get back to the road; once he reentered the darkness of the forest he had no way of telling how much time had passed. So little light seeped through the branches overhead that for a time he was certain he was going in circles, and it was only the fact that he had lost his lighter that kept him from making a torch to help him on his way. That had pissed him off to no small end. He could have used a cigarette right about then.

The kudzu – or whatever it was – had trailed him the entire way. He had heard it creeping along behind him, cautious, careful, but lurking like Goku drooling over a plate of meat buns that Hakkai wouldn't let him eat, eagerly waiting for a moment of distraction to take advantage of. A few shots from his gun seemed to discourage it from getting _too_ close – it wasn't as if he could exactly see what he was shooting at, anyway – but neither did it leave him be.

He wondered if it had gotten to his comrades, and whether or not it had already drained them past the point of no return.

_They're demons,_ he decided, with no small bit of disgust. _If I could survive this long against that thing, they should be fine. Goku would probably eat any plant that attacked him, anyways._

Moonlight streamed down on the rutted path, nearly blinding him when he stumbled out from under the canopy. There was no jeep in sight, and no tracks in the dirt to show signs of passage. He had no point of reference. He had no fucking _clue_ where he was.

Sanzo let his legs collapse out from under him and knelt on the road, panting from exertion. He had barely recovered any energy in all the time that had passed.

_If I find Homura any time soon, I'm going to chop him into tiny pieces and _force-feed_ him to that kudzu vine._

Something rustled the bushes across from him. He had the banishing gun up and cocked before he saw the streamlined head of Hakkai's dragon. It keened weakly at him.

Sanzo exhaled sharply and lowered the pistol, resting it against his thigh. Well, at least he wasn't exactly alone anymore. If Hakuryuu was here, he mustn't be too far away from where he started. Or from Hakkai. Unless the dragon was as lost as he was, which would really, really suck.

"You know where he is?" he asked. He had always felt a little stupid at the prospect of talking with something that couldn't talk back, but the dragon obviously understood when Hakkai spoke to it. Trying wouldn't hurt anything.

The little beast crawled out from under the bushes, creeping across the dirt path like some kind of demented white bat, and craned its head to look past Sanzo. It keened again, gathering its haunches and launching itself into the air before wafting over to the woods where the priest _had just come out from_.

Fuck. He must have done something very bad in a past life to deserve this kind of hell.

"Are you _sure_ he's back there?" he asked skeptically, glaring at the dragon over his shoulder.

Hakuryuu only cooed and disappeared into the forest.

Sanzo sighed and pushed himself back to his feet. He had a feeling this was going to be a very long night.

Following the dragon was like running after a ghost; Hakuryuu stood out in the darkness like a luminescent beacon just out of reach. It became apparent to him that he wasn't going in _exactly_ the same direction as he had come from, which was good, in a way. If, for any reason, it became known that he had passed right by Hakkai without seeing him being eaten by a fucking _plant_, he would never be allowed to live it down. Gojyo would find a way to bring it up in every conversation, and then Sanzo would have twice the reason to kill him once they stopped this whole stupid revival-of-Gyumaoh thing. Five times the reason to kill him _before_ they reached India, because he would have been driven insane before they even reached their destination.

He tried not to concentrate on the very real thought that Gojyo or Hakkai might be dead already – if not by the kudzu vine, then by Homura and his flunkies. He knew Goku was fine – Homura, for whatever reason, wanted the monkey alive, if not entirely undamaged. He could also hear the boy watching him, faintly in the back of his skull; he always could, every time any manner of distance separated them. On the one hand, the constant silent _staring_ was annoying and unnerving; on the other hand, it gave him one less person to worry about. Or one _more_ person, depending on the situation.

But he had no way of ascertaining that the other two were alive, and that was bad since he needed Hakkai's dragon to get to India, and the stupid beast wouldn't go anywhere without his master. He forced himself not to dwell on either of those facts. Instead, he concentrated on making his way through the underbrush without tripping, listening carefully for the distinctive _hiss_ of the kudzu stalking behind him.

In the end, the kudzu didn't find him. _He_ found _it_.

A huge slithering mass of it dominated the darkness before him; it crawled up the trees and snaked along the canopy overhead. Moonlight filtered through the leaves and lit them up from behind, casting the small area in shades of pale green and white. The sense of _hunger_ was palpable, thick and heavy like humidity or _youryoku_, tickling the edges of his senses, and Sanzo felt more than a little miffed that he hadn't noticed the air of menace the instant they had entered the forest.

Hakuryuu made no sound as he hovered in place, careful to remain a safe distance from the plant. Even so, it was apparent that the kudzu was already taking notice of them; some of the vines were beginning to slither in their general direction. One patch of it disturbed another item on the ground – the sudden glint of light reflecting off a metal object caught Sanzo's attention, and he looked harder.

It was Gojyo's _shakujou_.

The priest cocked his pistol and glared at Hakuryuu when the dragon fluttered to his shoulder, apparently unnerved by the closeness of the plant. "_He_ was supposed to mean Hakkai," he said balefully.

The coo he received in response sounded in no way apologetic.

More leaves were turning in his direction now, and several creepers were far too close for comfort. The greater mass remained concentrated in the center of the tiny clearing, and as the vines twisted he could occasionally see the muted crimson of Gojyo's hair beneath the trembling leaves. So the water sprite had managed to get caught by a plant as well – Sanzo could only envision the comments the idiot would be making after this incident: _"I'm so sexy even a _plant_ wants to suck me off,"_ and so forth.

"Whatever," he growled, and shot the creeper closest to his right foot.

The effect was pleasing; the sections of the vine that hadn't been blasted into goopey fibers quickly withered and turned to brown husks, all the way back into the canopy and across the mass that covered Gojyo. The rest of the vines instantly stopped all their motions, before slowly starting to creep back away from his feet. The huge, spade-like leaves were vibrating at an even faster pace, but at least the plant had some survival instinct.

Not that Sanzo had any real sense of mercy. He continued firing into the plant, choosing the stalks that were furthest from the prone half-demon, as he was unable to see just where Gojyo's limbs were under all that mess. One vine even had the gall to try and approach him from above, dangling from the heights of the canopy, but a warning screech from Hakuryuu and a single shot from the banishing gun quelled _that_ act of rebellion. By the time the pistol clicked on an empty chamber half the clearing was a disarray of dried up leaves and woody stems, with the remainder of the kudzu backed away into the canopy or the edges of the clearing.

The priest reached into his robes for his spare bullets and reloaded the gun before stepping further towards Gojyo. The vines, still a good ten feet away, rustled backward with his every forward movement. That, indeed, was a vast improvement; that act of caution on the part of a nearly mindless enemy pleased him in a way that almost made up for how exhausted he was currently feeling.

"Hey," Sanzo said, and kicked Gojyo unceremoniously in the arm. There was no response.

_Fuck_, he thought. _If he's unconscious I am _so_ not dragging him through these woods with a hungry plant breathing down my neck._ He kicked the arm again, harder, but Gojyo didn't so much as twitch. He was lying on his stomach, face turned toward the Sanzo, dead leaves and a thin veil of red hair obscuring his features. He couldn't even see if the man was breathing.

He quickly squelched the surge of panic that thought brought on.

Hakuryuu abruptly screamed, wings buffeting his head as the creature launched itself into the air. Instinctively he dove in the opposite direction, and felt the cool brush of foliage against his cheek. The damn plant was attacking him again!

His finger pulled the trigger three times before the rattling of the leaves subsided, the vines again withdrawing from where he had been forced to sprawl on the ground. He could no longer see the dragon, but at least from this angle he _could_ see the rise and fall of Gojyo's chest, and the rapid fluttering of long-lashed eyes. Dead foliage crunched beneath him as he rolled onto his knees and scooted forward to kneel at the other man's side, warily keeping an eye on the plant that remained just out of sight in the darkness.

Sanzo grasped the back of Gojyo's vest and heaved him over onto his back. Even unconscious the man was incredibly taut, fighting almost instinctively against the hands on his body. His fingers twitched spasmodically against the ground, rattling the dry branches; every tense muscle highlighted by the moon and even the way his eyes rolled beneath his closed lids screamed _nightmare_.

"I am not dragging you through his godforsaken forest," he told the unconscious man, drawing back his free hand. "So you'd better do yourself a favor and _wake the fuck up!_"

He caught the glimpse of green amidst the brown, realizing too late that the plant was still attached to Gojyo's calf. But then his hand connected to Gojyo's cheek in an open-hand slap, and the instant his fingers touched the other man's skin -

_/ ...no... /  
_

- there was a door in front of him.

_What the hell...?_

It had probably seen better days; the white paint was chipped and peeling and dirt was caked in the molding along the edges of the jam, but it was obvious that the door had once been well-cared for. Painted and washed on a regular basis in order to make the house it belonged to all the more appealing and homey. But it had been neglected for some time now – years, no doubt – and now it looked like it had seen too many days of grubby hands and not enough days of soap and water.

Sanzo stared. _What-?_

For a moment he couldn't react. What the hell had happened? One moment he was kneeling in a forest, trying to wake a dreaming _kappa_ and fend off a voracious plant hell bent on eating them at the same time. Now he was standing in front of a door admiring the paint flakes? What the hell?

_/ ...don't touch me... /  
_

No. He had already gone to the mountain and freed Goku from the prison the gods had carved for him. There was no reason for him to be hearing that voice again. The boy hadn't called out to him in years, not since he had reached the pinnacle of a holy mountain and broke numerous seals that had remained untouched for centuries. Why would he be hearing that voice now, when only a few minutes ago it had been silent? And what the hell did he mean by "Don't touch me"?

Something landed with a muffled crash inside the house. It sounded like a vase.

Sanzo frowned and turned to look over his shoulder. It was day time, where ever he was, at direct odds with the moonlit-night he had previously been running through, with a watery sun not far above the horizon in a clear sky. There was a line of laundry drying a few feet away from him, an overturned basket of half-folded clothing lying beneath it. The yard was mostly dirt, with a few patches of half-dead grass desperately attempting to cling to life. But more than twenty feet away everything started to fade, the colors bleeding together until the images lost definition. There was a path leading away to what Sanzo presumed was the north, but the world beyond the weed-encrusted fence it passed was indeterminate. It was like the world outside the house he stood before only barely existed.

_/ ...just a dream... just a dream... /  
_

That's right. It _was_ just like a dream.

Gojyo's dream.

Another thud echoed from inside the house, so heavy that the door rattled in its frame. A thin, wavering voice rose up; the words were too muffled to be made out, but the feverish screaming of another voice – a woman's voice, from what Sanzo could tell – cut it off in mid-sentence.

The words of the woman were easy to make out from the volume. "-disgusting creature! Don't touch me! Don't touch _anything_! You'll make it dirty!"

The sound of another fragile thing breaking.

"You think you know?! You don't know anything, you filthy animal! Get away from me! _Get away from me!_"

_/ ...no... /  
_

Another dream. Another nightmare that was so real Sanzo could easily smell the scent of discarded laundry water in the tub by the door. The breeze that ruffled his hair and the warmth of the sun radiating off the filthy wood of the door was so _real_ that any belief that he might be somewhere else, in a death-filled forest in the middle of the night, was difficult to comprehend. He grasped for the lifeline of Goku's ethereal voice again, trying to find a link back to the real world, but it danced out of reach, jerking away every time he got near.

_/ ...don't touch me... /  
_

Perhaps this was what the kudzu vine did – it inflicted a dreamlike state, probably with poison secreted through the mouth-like protrusions Sanzo had found attached to his stomach. The nightmare induced was so vividly real that even if the dreamer _did_ realize it was a dream, there was nothing solid enough that could startle them back into awareness. The physical slap Sanzo had administered evidently did no good at all; if anything, it only made the situation worse, because now _he_ was in the dream as well. Somehow he had been sucked into Gojyo's nightmares.

And from the screaming inside he had a pretty good inclination of just what nightmare he had stepped into.

The first logical motion he had to take was to find a way to wake Gojyo up. Somehow he needed to get through to the man that this was nothing more than a dream – there was nothing to fear in dreams. They were nothing more than memories, and memories could only haunt, not physically harm.

_crimson-silver blade cutting a deadly arc through the air, the sharpened edge seeking to embed itself in his back_

Sanzo squeezed his eyes shut and forced the image away, focusing on the reassuring weight of the pistol in his hand. If the Maten scripture hadn't finally reacted to his plight, could he had truly died in that dream?

_No. I can't focus on that. I risk losing myself to _this_ dream if I don't stay focused on what's real._

But what reason did the plant have to induce such horrible dreams?

_/ ... no, no, no, no... /  
_

The weak thread of Goku's voice wound through his mind, the monotonous chant an eerie backdrop to the war that suddenly fell silent inside the house. Goku must also be caught in a nightmare, Sanzo decided – but instead of reaching _towards_ the priest, the way he had while still trapped inside the mountain, he was actually pushing Sanzo _away_. It had been years since Goku had spoken in that tiny voice that only reached the confines of Sanzo's mind, and he had stopped having nightmares months before the trip to India had even begun. Even those the boy had been unable to describe, only able to convey them as black, faceless monsters that he was incapable of remembering after he had awoken, screaming in blind terror. But he had always reached towards Sanzo for comfort, and Sanzo had always stoically given it, if only because he knew that he'd be unable to return to sleep if he didn't.

The priest abruptly felt irrationally angry. Not just because he was caught in another person's dream, or that he was tired and needing a fucking cigarette _right now_. Not just because he was forced to defend his life – yet again – and the lives of others who _should_ have been perfectly capable of defending themselves. But because this mindless stupid fucking _plant_ was using their own nightmares as weapons. Their own deepest, darkest, unnamable fears had suddenly become the tools of their destruction.

That pissed him off to no small end. And the anger was real and bit deeper than the weariness and uncertainty.

Sanzo was going to wake the stupid water sprite up, and the two of them were going to find Hakkai and Goku. And then Sanzo was going to make the plant and whoever was behind it learn the _true_ meaning of pain.

He wrapped his fingers around the handle and turned the knob.


	4. SECTION FOUR

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they were. sigh...

I have to say it: although writing this chapter was almost as hard as writing an essay on the fungus in your bathroom, it turned out to be my favorite so far. I love it every time I read it, especially the brief conversation between Sanzo and Gojyo at the end. XD! I could just squeal.

The story goes up to R again, for language and bad mothers. Spoilers for Gojyo's past – I am aware that in the anime Gojyo's mother attempts to kill him by strangulation, but in the manga she goes after him with an axe. I liked the idea of having him run away from an axe instead. So there. :P!

---

---

_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

---

---

SECTION FOUR

---

---

He flinched when another plate crashed too close to where he stood, back pressed against the wall. His mother had effectively cornered him; if he went to his right he would fetch up against the dining room wall, and before he could make it to the kitchen door or the bedroom hallway she would be in his face, scratching and clawing until he backed up again. The burning on his cheek and the cold sensation of blood dripping on his collarbone was testament to that tactic. Bolting to his left would have better results, as the living room would provide more space for him to maneuver – but going left would mean trapping himself, as there were no windows through which he could escape. He could only go to his right – into the kitchen and out the side door, into one of the bedrooms and out a window – or straight through his mother, to the ill-fitting door that let sunlight in through the seams.

But Gojyo couldn't even attempt that passage. His mother was a full-blooded demon, taller, stronger, and more vicious than he could ever think to be. The nails at the ends of her fingers were wicked and sharp, while his were blunt and easily broken. He didn't want to hurt her, and probably couldn't even if he tried – he was only twelve, a bastard half-breed, and lean for his age. She was an adult – and she wanted to hurt him badly.

Mama had been a pretty woman once, he knew; the sun-streaked brown of her hair and the golden tone of her skin complemented each other, and when she smiled her eyes would light up and sparkle like the sun on the stream not far from the house. But there were lines on her face now, lines of grief and possibly insanity. The only things that sparkled in her eyes these days were tears.

He wanted her to smile at him. He wanted to do _anything_ that would make her smile. But the only thing she did was cry.

Gojyo dodged a drinking glass, reflexively raising his arms to guard his face when the chips flew in his direction. He made another dodge to his right, towards the kitchen, but the movement was aborted by the vase Jien had managed to save the _last_ time Mama had thrown it at her adopted son. This time she threw it with such force that the delicate object fairly disintegrated; there would be no gluing it back together this time.

_Jien is going to be pissed when he finds this mess_, he thought dolefully.

Jien would be back from work soon. Then he'd grab Mom and drag her away from Gojyo, into the bedroom to calm her down. And Gojyo could go back outside, down to the stream, so he wouldn't have to listen to her cry, or listen to the faint squeaking of bedsprings. When Jien got home, everything would be fine again. He just had to keep from getting hurt until then.

"You filthy brat!" she screamed, grabbing the last plate from the table and hurling with both hands. He ducked again, and felt the porcelain shards catch in his hair. "Evil, nasty child! Why did you even touch the dishes?! What have I told you all this time?!"

He had only set the table because doing so made it easier on Jien when it came time for supper. Jien worked all day at the lumber yard, coming home filthy and exhausted only a few hours before the sun set. Neither of them trusted Mom in the kitchen anymore – the last time she had tried to make supper she had left a hand towel on the stove, and the propane flames had set it on fire. If Gojyo hadn't come straight home from school that day, he would have found a smoking pile of rubble instead of a house.

So now, instead of getting washed up and having a decent meal before resting, Jien would have to cook and wash the dishes as well. Mama wouldn't eat off of any plate Gojyo touched. And while Gojyo could live with his mother hating him so much (_After all, when _hasn't_ she hated me?_), he couldn't live with the lines of exhaustion on his brother's face. Both of them tried so hard to please their mother, but Jien was the only one that succeeded. And sometimes, in the dark of the night, he wanted very desperately to be jealous of his brother for succeeding where he couldn't. But Gojyo simply couldn't be so cold-hearted as to leave all the work to Jien.

He had hoped Mama wouldn't notice the table after he had set it; she rarely did all the times he had before. But this time she had caught him in the act, with the silverware still clutched in his hands like evidence of guilt, and that was all it took to set her off.

"I just thought I could help Jien –" he tried, extending one hand towards her in a helpless gesture.

A wordless scream of rage escaped her, animalistic in its hoarse savagery, and she overturned the dining room table with one swift movement. The silverware and remaining cups smashed to the ground, and he could feel the frame of the house shudder against his shoulder blades.

"Don't you dare!" she ranted, twisting her fingers in her long, sun-burnt tresses. "Don't you _dare_ say that about Jien! He doesn't need your help! Jien is perfect! He's the only thing that helps me survive such a disgusting creature! Don't touch me! Don't touch _anything!_ You'll make it dirty!"

Gojyo withdrew his hand, crossing his arms defensively across his chest, struggling to shove away the deep relief he felt now that Mom didn't have any projectiles to aim at him. But the floor was still littered with glass and porcelain, and his feet were bare. Even now he risked pain, if he tried to run or tried to stay. What kind of fucked up choice was that?

His mother sobbed abruptly, choking on her tears, and half-fell to her knees. One hand dug gouges in the sanded wood of the table when she caught the upturned edge to support herself. It was everything he could do not to race forward and comfort her; she would never, ever accept comfort from him. He could never make those tears stop flowing.

"You don't understand," she whispered, the long bangs of her hair obscuring her eyes at last. He could still see the tear tracks on her cheeks. "Your eyes, your hair... so red. Like the blood of that filthy, human woman..."

But he did understand. Every time he looked in the mirror or brushed his hair he saw the remnants of the woman that bore him. He had never seen his true mother, or even his true, demonic father – the father that he and Jien shared – but every morning when he woke to wash his face, the first thing that greeted his eyes was red. It was those crimson eyes and hair that earned him rocks and insults in the school yard, demeaning remarks and bad grades from his teachers, accusations of theft in the marketplace, tears and pain in his own home. Cutting off or hiding his hair didn't help, because his eyes always remained. He couldn't very well gouge out his own eyes, as many times as he might have contemplated it. He was a taboo child, the illicit result of a relation between demon and human, with the blood of both running through his veins. The red of his eyes and hair was a reminder of the mother he had never known and the father who had defied the laws of the gods to be with her, despite the demon woman he was already legally married to.

_I understand_, he thought. _Perhaps even better than you do._

It was when another wordless scream erupted from his adopted mother that Gojyo realized he had accidentally said that thought aloud.

The fragments of a broken glass smashed on the wall beside his head, and he could see blood on her hand from where she had grabbed the broken edge. "You think you know?!" she screamed in fury. "You don't know anything, you filthy animal! Get away from me! _Get away from me!_" The overturned table screeched against the wooden planking of the floor as she shoved herself to her feet and ran desperately into the kitchen. The bat-wing doors smacked loudly against the walls, swinging rapidly back and forth from her hasty entrance, and from within he could hear her banging pantry doors and throwing the dishes drying in the racks. Her sobs were audible even under the sound of breaking glass.

Gojyo pressed one shaking hand to his narrow chest, feeling the speedy pulse of his heart through the thin cotton of his tee-shirt, letting his legs fall out from under him and sliding down the wall to a seated position. He could hear his pulse in his ears as well, felt it in the veins of his eyes and in his throat, and yet inside he felt incomprehensibly numb. His limbs felt heavy, and breathing came in shallow gasps. Why did he feel this way? Why was he so frightened of his adopted mother? He knew it wasn't normal, knew that normal mothers didn't hate their children like this. Normal adopted children didn't evoke this kind of revulsion, either – he knew a girl whose parents had been killed in a house fire, and two elderly folks who had never had children, never even known her before the incident, had taken her in and treated her as if she had always been their own.

Was it simply because he existed? Would it have been easier for his mother, Jien's mother, to accept his father's adulterous acts if he had never been born? Could she have been satisfied with sharing her husband with a mortal woman if that mortal woman had never conceived a child? Had his father hated him on sight as well, and given the taboo child to his legal wife as a way of 'getting rid of the evidence'?

His father should have simply drowned him in a lake. That would have saved his mother all those tears.

Something other than blood trailed down his cheek, and Gojyo struggled to hold back a sob. He didn't deserve to live. Not only was he a bastard and a child born out of wedlock, he was also an adopted son and an abomination to the natural world. Things like him didn't deserve to live. Things like him only brought tears and pain.

The handle of the door rattled, and dimly he realized that it was too early for Jien to be coming home. Jien wouldn't leave the lumber yard for almost half an hour, and anyone who might bother to visit his mother would at least knock before entering. He couldn't let anyone see the house like this. He needed to get this mess cleaned up before Jien got home; Jien worked too hard to have to clean up after his mother's tantrums as well. Besides, it was all Gojyo's fault. If he hadn't set the table she never would have gotten worked into such a frenzy.

_Maybe Mom will stay in the kitchen until Jien comes home. That'll make it easier to clean up the dining room and stand the table back up_. Gojyo sniffled and wiped the back off his hand under his nose, felt blood and tears smear against the skin, and absently wiped it off on his jeans. _The broom and pan are in the kitchen. I guess... I guess I'll just pick this up by hand... _He twisted his legs to the side in order to sit more naturally, and leaned forward to reach for the largest piece of the busted vase.

That movement was the only thing that saved him from the axe that lodged in the wall above his head.

Gojyo froze, hand still outstretched towards the shattered pieces of porcelain. He could see his fingers trembling. The wind from the passing of the axe disturbed his hair, and he could feel the bits of plaster knocked out of the wall scattering on the back of his shirt.

He couldn't move. He couldn't breath. _She just tried to kill me_... his mind told him, but his body couldn't or wouldn't accept the facts.

Mama planted her foot at an angle to the wall and grunted heavily when she tugged the axe loose. More plaster rained down on him, and it was only then, when she had stepped backward and smacked the thick handle of the weapon into her palm, that he dared to straighten.

Gojyo recognized the axe. Jien had bought it only days ago, when the old one they had used to chop firewood had finally gotten so old and nicked that it simply couldn't be sharpened anymore. This one was black and silver (the other was red and silver, but Jien and Gojyo both knew how Mom would react to _that_), the edge still polished and sharp as new. One blow of that heavy blade could take a boy's head right off.

_She's going to kill me,_ he realized. _She's really going to kill me this time._

And maybe it was only proper that she did. Nothing he did was right – he could only do elementary maths, he could barely read or spell his own name, he couldn't get along with the children at school, he was weak and got upset easily, he couldn't even _swim_... about the only thing he had any talent with was fishing and the battered deck of cards Jien had given him for his birthday a few years back. What kind of skills were those for a boy who was almost a man? He was undoubtedly pathetic. He would never amount to anything, no matter how often Jien would smile at him in that tired way and tell him otherwise.

He was a bastard and an abomination, a disgusting creature that had no place on this earth. He didn't deserve to live.

_And if I die... maybe all those tears will disappear._

Mom took a bracing step backward, tears streaming from those beautiful eyes, and began to lift the axe above her head. "I'll make it better," she whispered, her chin quivering and her chest hitching with suppressed sobs. "Don't worry, I'll make it all better..."

_Once I'm gone she'll be able to smile again. _

Gojyo couldn't take another breath, his lungs had frozen inside his chest – and yet in the same moment he felt as though a weight had been lifted off of him. He knew what to do now. He knew what he could do to finally make everything right again. He just... had to close his eyes. And then Mom would be happy again. And Jien, too.

The axe quivered upward at its apex, and Gojyo let his eyes flutter shut.

The door handle rattled again, harder this time, like someone was trying to get in. It didn't matter; by the time anyone got inside he'd be dead, and everything _would_ be right again. He could only hope the visitor wouldn't take Mom away for killing him. Then she'd be sad all over again, and Jien –

_It's almost time for Jien to be home. I wish I could have cleaned up this mess before Mom-_

Wait a second. He _did_ clean up the mess before Mom brought out the axe. Then why...?

The door handle rattled again, far more furiously, and then the whole door shook with a violent _bang_. The door was locked, and someone was throwing their weight against it, trying to get in. Why was the door locked?

Gojyo opened his eyes and looked up at his mother. She still had the axe lifted high over her head. Though he couldn't see her eyes, he could see her lips.

Mama was smiling.

"It's okay," she whispered. The muscles of her arms twitched with the weight of holding the heavy weapon. "Jien can't come and help you this time. This time I'll do it right."

Jien couldn't help him this time? "Mom...?" he whispered, not comprehending. The mysterious person on the outside threw themselves against the door again, but the old lock stubbornly held tight.

Then he realized:

_It's too early for Jien to be home. Who's outside the door? _

_ I never heard Mom come back out of the kitchen. Why didn't I hear the kitchen doors? _

_ I didn't lock the door behind me. When did she lock the door? _

_ Mom's never tried to use an axe against me before. What does she mean by 'this time'? _

And he realized:

_This has happened before. _

_ This happened almost ten years ago. I'm not a child anymore; I'm a card shark and a drunk and a womanizer, traveling west with a bunch of nutballs who are crazier than I am. Mom's long dead. Jien killed her when she tried to kill me. He walked in that door and killed her with the sword dad left to him. _

_This is just a dream._

But when had his dreams been so vivid? He could feel the blood on his cheek, from the scars he would end up carrying for the rest of his life. He could taste the burn in the back of his throat from repressed tears. He could feel his heart racing in his chest. He could smell –

_grapes_

Mom brought down the axe, and he threw himself to his left, unthinkingly. The weapon whizzed past his form, missing by scant inches, and the floor shuddered beneath his hands as the blade impacted with the wood. Splinters flew like daggers, and he could feel them catching on the weave of his jeans. His feet slipped as he staggered to his feet.

"_Gojyo!_"

He shouldn't turn to her. He knew he shouldn't look at her. He should take this moment to get to the door, unlock it, and run out. That way –

But what the hell was he thinking? This was just a stupid dream. It didn't matter if he died, or if he couldn't get away from her in time. You couldn't die in _dreams_. If that was true then he would be dead a hundred times over.

And yet the pain in his cheek was so _real..._

"Be a good boy and stay still, Gojyo... mama will make it quick... just..." – the sound of the axe being tugged from the floorboards, and the sound of glass crunching underfoot as she staggered under the weight of the weapon – "...just stay still..."

The door banged _again_, and still the lock did not break. What kind of lightweight was trying to break the door down, anyways?

"Get the hell away from her, Gojyo!"

He knew the voice of the unknown person. He _knew_ it. He just couldn't _place_ it. It wasn't Jien, it wasn't anyone from in town, it wasn't ...

The axe whizzed by again, and this time he fell forward, dropping to his hands and knees and scuttling away from her like a bug he had once seen in the kitchen. She overbalanced again and crashed into the end table, knocking over the lamp and falling to her knees. The door was only inches from his grasp, and yet he hesitated, looking back after his mother. If he left her like this, she would only succeed in hurting herself... and yet if he stayed...

_Snap out of it!_ he swore at himself. _This is just a dream! Mom is dead, there's nothing you can do for her now!_

"If you don't wake the hell up _right now_, I swear I am going to beat the fucking shit out of you!"

He looked back to the door. And yet, and yet...

"Don't listen to him, Gojyo."

He looked back at his mother. She had straightened again, the weapon held loosely in one hand, the axe head dragging on the floor. The shadows obscured her face, and in the hollows where her eyes should be he could see the pale blue gleam of hunger.

"Don't listen to him," she said again. "It's okay to dream. In your dreams you can do what you were always meant to do... die for me..."

Wasn't that what he had convinced himself of only minutes, seconds ago? Once he was dead her tears would stop and she could be happy again. Dead, she could not cry, but neither could she smile. She had died where he should have. He should have died.

"Goddamnit, Gojyo! You couldn't have accomplished anything by dying! Dying now won't accomplish anything! Now either wake yourself up or _open this fucking door!_"

Mom took another step forward, and he could see where the axe was gouging a line in the floorboards. Only two more steps and he would be within striking range again. "Die for me," she whispered. She was in the light again, but he still could not see her face. There was only a shapeless black mass and two bright blue lights for eyes where her face should have been.

If he had died back then, he could have stopped her tears. His death seemed a small price to pay in return for her happiness. If he had died, Jien would never have had to kill his own mother. He could have stopped Jien's tears, too.

But if he had died, Hakkai would also be dead, because no one would have stumbled across his broken and bleeding body on the road that rainy night. No one would have stuffed a dead man's guts back into his stomach and brought him home like a lost puppy. And if, by any chance, he had survived, no one would have been there to protect him from an overzealous monk and his pet monkey.

Maybe... maybe he deserved to live. Maybe he deserved to live past this horrible point in his childhood, if only to save Hakkai from himself seven years later.

Mama lifted the axe and took another step, the wiry muscles in her arms jumping as she lifted it above her head. "Now hold still," she murmured. "It'll only hurt for a second... just a pinprick..."

She brought the axe down, and this time he threw himself backwards, scrabbling at the floor, the back of his head connecting solidly with the door. For a second all he saw was white, and when his vision cleared he saw he had barely pulled his feet back far enough to avoid being struck. More splinters had flown with the impact of the blade, and this time one had struck true – there was blood on his calf from where the wood

_plant_

had pierced through the jeans and embedded in his flesh. His mother loomed over him, and her knuckles were white from where her fingers clutched the wooden handle.

"Hold still," she said, and tugged the axe loose from the floorboards.

He couldn't die. He wasn't supposed to die. You can't die in dreams.

"Gojyo!" Sanzo shouted from beyond the door. He sounded pissed beyond belief, even more pissed than that one time Goku had stolen all the towels from his room in the bath house and accidentally dropped his robes in the mud.

_We're all closer to Buddha when we stop breathing. _

_We're alive, kid. We're all alive for a reason. _

_Find out why._

Gojyo turned and threw himself at the door, fumbling for the dead bolt, drawing it back. The knob twisted underneath his sweat-slicked palm, and he was forced back when the door slammed open, striking his forehead and threatening to blind his vision again.

But this time everything went white except for the person who came in through the door, dressed in off-white robes and with hair as bright as the sun, leveling a pistol at the crazy mother with an axe, snarling "Fuck you," before pulling the trigger and –

---

Sanzo wasted no time in blowing away the remnants of the kudzu vine the moment the night returned to him. He emptied the remaining rounds into the darkness, grabbing the still-groggy Gojyo by the arm and dragging him to his feet. When his pistol clicked dully on an empty chamber, he tucked the gun away and bent to grab the discarded _shakujou,_ then turned and ran, pulling the half-demon along behind him. Gojyo staggered for a few feet, but then roughly shrugged the priest off and ran under his own power.

That was fine with Sanzo. He didn't need to take care of the other man in real life as well.

Hakuryuu had rejoined them by the time they began to run, floating before Sanzo like a beacon to safety, leading them back to the road that was thankfully free of plant life. If the kudzu followed, he couldn't hear it over the sounds of him and Gojyo crashing through the underbrush. Even if it did, there was none to bar their way to the path and none at their heels when they burst back into moonlight and fell to their knees, gasping for breath.

Sanzo recovered first, rolling off his knees to sit more naturally in a cross-legged position, the _kappa's_ weapon forgotten at his side. He said nothing, staring in silence at the half-demon struggling to catch his breath, hunched over with his forehead pressed against the dirt. It was a pathetically vulnerable position. He doubted Gojyo particularly cared in that moment.

When Gojyo finally straightened again, the first thing he did was pull out a cigarette. It seemed the most natural thing to do in this new situation; there was no expression on his face as he fished for his lighter and put flame to cigarette tip.

He inhaled deeply and exhaled, his crimson eyes following the trail of smoke up into the sky. Hakuryuu keened quietly from its perch on a nearby bush.

"What took you so long?" he asked quietly.

Sanzo leaned to his side, reaching into his robes to remove his own pack of cigarettes, withdrawing one and extending it towards the other man.

"I lost my fucking lighter," he said.

Gojyo wordlessly lit the cigarette in reply.


	5. SECTION FIVE

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they were. sigh...

This one went by faster than I expected, although I found it somewhat difficult to bring it to a close. Gojyo is a more fun perspective to write from in this story than he has been in others. Looking forward now, it appears that most of the story is going to be in either Sanzo or Gojyo's viewpoint. Fun, fun, fun.

This chapter is R for bad language. I found it difficult to keep the language from getting too repetitive, but I think I managed. Slight references to the demonic tree in episode 13, and the plant demon in episode 14. Next chapter: Hakkai's nightmare. Like we really have to guess to figure out what it'll be about. XD!

Review comments on the bottom.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

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SECTION FIVE

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Gojyo silently cursed his hands when he tried to light his second cigarette in as many minutes. They trembled, minutely, just enough that he could see the flame flickering from something other than his breath, just enough that he could feel the vibration of muscles that refused to work smoothly and efficiently. He didn't want to reveal how rattled he still was from the encounter with that... thing... but he knew that if his lighter had not cooperated with him, he probably would have thrown it on the ground and pitched a screaming fit like a little fucking child.

The gods of compassion were on his side, it seemed, for his lighter worked on the first try. He drew more of the heavenly nicotine into his lungs and held his breath for as long as he could.

If Sanzo noticed his current state he showed no sign of it. If Sanzo _did_ notice it, Gojyo was profusely thankful that, for once, he had opted for the path less vocal. No words had passed between them since he had lit the monk's cigarette, and Gojyo was thankful for that, too. He didn't think he could trust his voice right now. He feared it might tremble, just like his hands.

_ Don't listen to him. It's okay to dream. In your dreams you can do what you were always meant to do... die for me..._

He exhaled, perhaps a little too hastily, too noisily, and watched the smoke curl around his face. There was no breeze on the pathway, despite the fact that it was probably one of the only places in this damned forest that actually had access to the sky. Moonlight lit the haze from above, and he silently observed the tiny particles in the smoke that weren't visible during the day. It was rather similar to watching dust motes float through a beam of sunlight.

_Is that really what I'm sucking into my lungs?_ he wondered absently. _No wonder people are always complaining about how smoking is bad for your health. Weak bastards._

He resolutely pushed away the image of tear-stained cheeks framing an eerie, sad smile. He didn't want to look at it, didn't want to touch it, just wanted to keep his mind empty. If he could focus on stupid, empty things right now, he wouldn't have to look back at the nightmare he had just gone through.

The gods knew he had dreamed that dream before a thousand times, but never had it been so vivid, so _real_... and at the same time, so incredibly alien.

Gojyo envied Sanzo for being so calm right now. He wasn't even halfway through his cigarette – the stick was tucked between the first two fingers of his left hand, his arm draped across his knee, the cherry happily burning away into oblivion. He was staring off into the woods as if there wasn't a care in the world, with that stupid monkley 'I'm meditating, don't bother me if you don't want your head ventilated' look on his face. As if he hadn't just been witness someone else's private nightmare and blown it away to smithereens.

He felt horribly, terribly violated. Memories like that weren't meant to be shared with other people. Spoken about, yes, but not shared – not seen, not experienced. In a sick kind of way they were like precious memories, kept close to the heart where they would continue to piece the soul and suck away at life until you died a miserable death. They were terrible things, and to let them loose into the light of day was like deliberately letting a monster wreak havoc in your front room. Nobody wanted to see that. Nobody wanted anyone else to see that, either. That's why bad memories were so often swept under the carpet, just like the mess you didn't want the guests to see when they walked through the front door.

He wondered if this was what it was like for women who had been raped. A crude comparison, but it seemed accurate all the same. Having someone... some_thing_... sneak into his mind like that and drag out the foulest, cruddiest thing it could find and put it out on display was a... disgusting feeling. Revolting. It made him feel so fucking weak.

And Sanzo had to see it, too. As if he needed the monk to find any other reason to call him weak or useless. In many ways that only made the experience worse. He didn't want the other man to see his private nightmares.

All the same, if Gojyo had to go through the entire experience again, he knew now he would have unlocked that door the instant he realized Sanzo stood outside it. The gratitude he felt towards the priest was so profound it almost shoved aside the revulsion that crawled inside his chest, combating the calming effects of the nicotine. If he had been less distraught at the moment he might have even considered kissing the guy, just to piss him off.

Instead he would settle for lighting Sanzo's cigarettes. That was probably the best thanks he could give right now.

The half-breed took a deep breath, exhaled, and then sucked in another lungful of smoke, bringing his hand up to pull the cigarette away from his lips. He felt gritty, like dirt had managed to work its way into his clothes. There was dirt on his forehead, too, and on his right cheek; he absently brushed the specks away with his thumb, careful not to let the cherry too close to his bangs. Beneath the dirt on his cheek he could feel the slick-dried tracks of tears. He scrubbed the evidence away as discretely as he could.

He let another minute pass by, marking time by how quickly his cigarette disappeared. The flame he put to his third one was steady, and though he could still feel the tremors in his arms, they were far less visible.

"So," he said, finally breaking the silence, leaning back on one arm and pushing the Zippo back in his pocket. His cigarette was clenched between his front teeth. "What, exactly, do you think that thing is?"

Sanzo's eyes flicked back in his direction, bored and otherwise expressionless. There was dirt smudged on his face as well, a streak of mud on his left cheekbone that showed up dark as a bruise against his pale skin. If Gojyo hadn't known him for as long as he had, hadn't practically slept in his back pocket for as long as he had, he wouldn't have believed that the priest had just been through Gojyo's personal hell and back. Fuck, he wasn't even breathing hard anymore. Asshole.

The priest brought the cigarette back to his lips, took a drag deep enough to bring the cherry all the way back to the filter, and then smudged the remainder out against a rock at his hip. "A plant," he replied stoically, the smoke escaping in those two words forming a ghostly halo around his face.

"A plant," Gojyo repeated. That was something that was altogether too obvious to him. Yeah, it was a fucking _plant_; he still had part of the creeper attached to his calf. He had made a token effort to pull the sucker off earlier, but the pain had been too much when combined with the frantic beating of his heart and the trembling of his hands. He could feel it there still, itching like a mother, burning like someone held a lit match to his skin. The muscle in that calf was threatening to seize up on him, and he was careful to keep his leg stretched out heel-first. "Yeah, I think I noticed that part."

"Good for you," the priest replied monotonously, and offered no more information, his violet gaze still cast down to where he had stubbed out his cigarette.

Anger coursed through him like a tidal wave, and then abruptly flowed away again, leaving him exhausted in its wake. He was tired. This whole thing left him so fucking tired. First Zenon playing Duck Hunter with him in the bushes, then that... that _nightmare_, and then the run through the woods that really shouldn't have taken this kind of toll on him... it all left him so tired. Hakkai, no doubt, would cheerfully blame it on the cigarettes, but Hakkai wasn't there right now, so –

Wait a second. Hakkai wasn't there. Neither was the monkey. It was only him, the monk, and Hakuryuu, who sat patient and still as death on a nearby branch. Panic seized him irrationally, he struggled to force it down. He only succeeded part-way.

"Where the hell is Hakkai and Goku?" he blurted. He could hear the fear that tinted his words, but figured that was better than flat-out panic.

Sanzo sighed, the sound strangely heavy and loud in the silence that surrounded them, and lifted his eyes to look back out into the woods. "Probably caught up by that plant as well," he replied. His voice was flat, almost carefully so.

"What?!" Gojyo surged forward, rolling onto his knees and reaching out to snatch his weapon away from where it rested at Sanzo's side. The priest recoiled at the sudden movement, almost looking startled, but the action failed to register with him until later, when he had a moment to really sit down and review all the events with a clear mind. If he had been paying attention, he realized later, he would have noticed how tense and on-edge the monk was, and might have considered rephrasing some of the things he said.

Maybe.

But he wasn't paying attention to those subtle signs at the moment. At the moment, he was royally pissed that Sanzo was sitting here with him and chewing the fat when their friends were possibly being gnawed on by a monster vine somewhere in this god damned forest. That angered him to no small extent.

"What the hell are we sitting here for?" he snarled, unable to keep the bite out of his tone, and pushed himself to his feet, using the _shakujou_ as a brace. His calf threatened to seize again, and with a snarl he bent over and ripped the creeper from his flesh. The pain only served to sharpen his anger, rather than remove him from it. "If they're out there being eaten by some nightmare plant from hell, we should be out there looking for them, not sitting here twiddling our thumbs! Fuck!"

"And where exactly to you propose to look for them?" Sanzo snapped in return. He made no move to get to his feet, instead pinning the half-breed with a narrow look from beneath thick bangs. "If you want to run out into that shithole without any idea of where to go, be my guest. I have no need look after useless idiots."

Gojyo had shrugged that particular insult off a hundred times before, but after what had just transpired it stung like a slap in the face. It hurt in a way it hadn't hurt before, reaching that tiny part of him that was terribly exposed at the moment, the part of him that heard those words and believed they were the truth.

"What _are_ we supposed to do then, high-and-mighty _Sanzo-houshi-sama_?" he hissed. "You're going to wait for them to dig themselves out of their own holes and come crawling back to you? Fuck that!"

"Sit down and shut up," the priest snarled in reply, anger lighting the violet eyes that had previously been so meticulously wiped clean of emotion. "I can't think with you crying in my ear like an irritating child."

"Child?!" Gojyo's arm had whipped out almost without conscious thought, and he seized the monk by the front of his robes and half-dragged him to his feet. Sanzo's right hand wrapped around his bicep in a brutally tight grip, with more strength than those delicate fingers looked like they possessed, but made no move to pull himself out of Gojyo's grasp. "If me worrying about Hakkai and Goku is childlike, then _you're_ the one acting like a fucking child! Sitting here sharing a smoke while they're out there possibly getting _killed_ is childlike, you son of a bitch! Aren't you even the least bit worried about them, you pompous assho– ?!"

Air escaped him in one brutally painful, involuntary exhalation, and the half-demon released Sanzo out of reflex. Even now, even at the receiving end of that nasty strike, it always surprised Gojyo just how wicked a left hook the priest had. It always came out of nowhere, when you were least expecting it, in the place that you were least capable of blocking. With one hand wrapped in Sanzo's robes and the other grasping his weapon, he would have been unable to block the punch to his sternum even if he had seen the attack coming. Now it was all he could do to stand while he tried to suck air back into his pitifully deflated lungs, leaned heavily on his _shakujou_ with both hands wrapped around the pole.

_Fucking bitch_, he thought spitefully. _I fucking hate you sometimes._

As Gojyo fought to get his breath back, the priest calmly settled himself in a kneeling position, resting his palms on his thighs. "If you're _quite_ through with your temper tantrum," he growled, "then maybe we can try thinking about this a little more rationally. Running out there without knowing what we're dealing with will only get us killed."

"Didn't stop you from getting me," the half-breed spat once breath returned to him. He greedily sucked the air in, still resting his weight heavily on his weapon. The paddle blade was sunk more than half-way into the dirt, and he was absently glad that he hadn't accidentally stuck it on his foot when Sanzo had punched him.

"Different matter," Sanzo snapped. "I tripped over you. I didn't exactly know you were there."

"Whatever." Gojyo straightened and rested one hand on his hip. "What the hell is the problem? It's just a plant – not something we haven't dealt with before. A little weed-whacking will get the job done."

"The last plant we dealt with had a sentient demonic mouthpiece, if you recall. So far, this one doesn't. Now sit the hell down, I'm not going to stare up at you during this whole conversation."

The anger was beginning to leave him again. Under normal situations he and Sanzo only barely got along – most of the time he couldn't stand the uptight bastard, and the feeling was probably mutual. They just had too many bad habits that got on the other's nerves. However (and he hated to admit it, even to himself), the priest had a point. They didn't know where Hakkai and Goku were, and they didn't have the advantage of light to see the vine coming after them. This wasn't like an average ambush from a pack of stupid demons. They would have to have a plan for this.

_Damnit_, Gojyo swore silently. He hated being one-upped by Sanzo like this. If it hadn't been for that damn nightmare, he probably would have suggested a plan first. But his nerves were in the way... were _still_ in the way...

He sighed and plopped himself back down, dropping the _shakujou_ beside him. "So what, then? Can't we just find the other two and worry about killing the vine when we get to that bridge?"

"Moron." The word was by no means fond, but it was less sharp in tone that the words before it. "What if they're caught up on the vine when we get there?"

Gojyo made a hacking motion with one hand. "We just cut them loose. What's so difficult about this, Sanzo? If we kill the plant, we let them loose, just like with the _ninjinka_ tree and that plant demon. Nothing to it."

The priest turned his eyes away, back out into the forest. He seemed almost... hesitant. And that wasn't a word the red-head would normally use in the same sentence with the blonde monk. Sanzo _never_ hesitated. At least, not about things like this. Not about life or death – and Gojyo _knew_ this was life or death. Knew it like he knew he would have died in that dream if –

_Shut it_, he told his mind firmly. _You can't die in dreams. Stop thinking about it all ready!_

"That vine..." Sanzo kept his eyes away from the half-demon, the violet depths unfocused in a way that declared deep thought. "Somehow, it taps into our fears. That's why we can't kill the plant while they're still attached to it."

Something about the way he stated that disturbed Gojyo, and not just because it brought up, unbidden, the hazy image of his mother looming over him with a sharp axe. He tried to push it away, but this time the picture stayed, resolute in haunting him.

Damn. He needed another cigarette.

"So what are you saying?" he asked. He leaned to the side in order to retrieve his cigarettes, pulling them out his jeans pocket. "You think it's feeding on our fears or something?"

"Maybe," the priest replied. "I don't know. Fear and anger are strong emotions that easily manipulate our _chi_. It could be that the kudzu is digging into our nightmares in order to raise our _chi_ and feed off us. Don't you feel drained?"

As a matter of fact, he did – drained in the way that left his muscles feeling quivery, even if they didn't actually tremble anymore. Drained enough that, if he wasn't so on edge, he would want to go to sleep, right there in the middle of the woods. But he wasn't going to say all _that_ to Sanzo.

"A little," he admitted. And the sight suddenly caught his eye – the front of Sanzo's robes were in a disarray, torn and slightly mottled with blood and plant matter. "Why do you ask like you _expect_ me to feel drained?"

That earned him a startled side-glance from those violet eyes, and Gojyo abruptly realized what the torn robes signified. He pointed a finger accusingly at the priest, cigarettes forgotten in his other hand. "You got stuck on that thing too, didn't you? That's why you're so hesitant about this whole thing. It got into your head, didn't it?"

Sanzo's nostrils flared in anger, and he narrowed his eyes spitefully. "We're talking about how to deal with the plant and get the other two back. Don't get side-tracked."

_But he doesn't deny it_, the red-head thought. _Damn. No wonder he's been such a bitch. _If Sanzo had been caught in a nightmare anywhere _near_ like his own – and Gojyo knew the guy had some fucked-up childhood issues (_Sounds like someone else I know, huh?_) – then perhaps he could forgive the guy some of his previous statements. Maybe.

And yet, the fact that Sanzo was managing to deal with this situation without loosing his cool only served to fan Gojyo's anger. And jealousy – why the hell couldn't he keep a lid on his own nerves like that?

He settled back on one hand, glaring off to the side, where Hakuryuu was huddled pitifully on his branch. "Okay. So we can't just kill the plant while it's busy sucking up their fear, or whatever. How did _we_ get free?"

"We woke up," the priest replied.

Gojyo resolutely reigned in his anger. Sanzo had managed to pull himself out of his own nightmare, and yet he hadn't been able to do the same with his own. Damn he was pitiful. He couldn't do anything right, could he? Couldn't even save himself from himself. Shit.

"Then we want to wake Hakkai and Goku up before cutting them off from the plant?" he asked. He didn't look away from the dragon.

"That's... probably the safest method. The psyche is a very delicate thing. Forcefully ripping them from a memory as painful as the plant will likely inflict could cause serious damage – it might even kill them."

"And I'm not too inclined to letting Hakkai get killed by a plant," Gojyo muttered. He curled his fingers around the package of cigarettes in his palm, squeezing it. It felt mostly empty – maybe only one or two sticks left. "Hey... do you think... "

The air was silent for a moment. There was still no breeze, no breath of air to soothe away the oppressive heat of the night.

"Spit it out," the priest said after minute. He sounded tired.

Gojyo still made no move to look back at him. "You think we could have died in there?" He didn't bother to clarify what he meant by 'in there'.

Sanzo's reply came after another moment of silence. "I don't know."

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The plan was fairly simple: find Hakkai and Goku, wake them up, cut them loose from the plant, and run like the devil was on their heels. Practical application of the plan was, of course, not nearly so simple or easy.

Sanzo had been fairly reluctant in revealing just _how_ he had managed to wake himself up, but the idea was fairly sound. Somehow, the plant became a part of the dream, and tried to kill the dreamer in the dream. Find out what part of the dream was the plant, kill the plant, and wake the dreamer up. And _then_ cut the plant off and run like the devil was on their heels. Which it likely would be.

Gojyo had, of course, objected at this point in the conversation. Just _how_ was he supposed to get into the dream in order find out what part of the dream was the plant, kill the plant, etc., to the point of running?

_"Touch him," Sanzo replied. "Somehow, that pulled me into your dream." _

_"You _touched_ me?" The red-head leered. "I'm not even sure I wanna ask _where_..." _

_"Shut it, asshole! We're trying to be serious!" _

_"Ouch! Shit, fine, whatever. But what if 'touching' doesn't work? What if I touch Hakkai and it doesn't drag me in? I'm not a hot-shot priest with the magical powers of the gods, here." _

_"I don't know. Use your best judgment. Cut him loose, if you think that's the only other alternative." _

Gojyo banished his weapon after the third time it got caught on a tree branch overhead. He didn't like wandering after Hakuryuu without it in his palms, but the damn crescent blade snagging on every twig he passed under was only slowing him up and causing an inordinate amount of noise. He wouldn't be able to hear if the kudzu vine was trailing him with all the racket he was making – and he wouldn't be able to hide, either. He hadn't brought up the fact before splitting with Sanzo, but it was entirely possible that Homura and company were still hanging around these woods, sharing a beer and laughing at how the dumb shits had gotten their ass handed to them on a platter by a plant. He didn't want any of the gods to come down on him while he was wandering around blind trying to find his friend.

Well, maybe they could come down _after_ he'd found Hakkai and cut him loose. If they shared the beer.

The white dragon winged its way to a protruding branch and settled itself down, craning its long neck back towards Gojyo. Sanzo had been the one to suggesting splitting up – that the two of them looking separately would get results faster than both of them looking for the same missing member of their party. He hadn't liked it, personally – still didn't like it – because what would happen if one of them ended up tangling with the vine again? Then there would only be one person left, looking for three people that were busy dreaming their way through their worst nightmares.

_"Then don't get caught," the priest replied. "I'm not wasting my time on you again." _

_"Goes double for you, cock-bite," Gojyo snarled in response. "Don't even _think_ I'm gonna come looking for you if _you_ get caught."_

Hakuryuu keened softly when the red-head came abreast of it, and he lightly stroked a finger along the dragon's flank. It leaned into the touch, arching its long neck like a cat, its ruby eyes reflecting the meager moonlight that made it through the canopy. This little dragon was probably his only way of locating Hakkai in this mess. There was a link between the two, no doubt about that; Gojyo didn't know if the beast was tracking his friend by scent or by some kind of mental tracing device, but as long as it brought him to Hakkai's side, he didn't really care.

Sanzo didn't have that luxury. How he was expecting to find Goku was beyond the half-demon at this point.

"Think that stuffed-up priest can find his monkey?" he murmured, scratching the dragon beneath its chin. It only blinked lazily at him and rustled its wings.

Maybe he shouldn't be so critical. Had the situation been reversed, had it been Goku looking for Sanzo, Gojyo knew that the runt would have homed in on the priest like a dog on a bone, regardless of where in the forest he might have been hiding. They had a weird bond like that. When something had happened to the other, they knew, just like that. Sanzo had known exactly where to look when Homura had gotten his hands on Goku, known exactly where the kid had been hiding. Goku's presence had completely eluded Hakkai and Gojyo's senses, but the priest just _knew_. The opposite was true as well.

In some ways it was too damn creepy. In other ways, it seemed entirely natural. It was yet another thing that caused a spark of anger – and yes, perhaps jealousy – in Gojyo. He had no clue where Hakkai was, couldn't help him, couldn't _find_ him, and yet Sanzo had no visible doubts that he could do all of the above for Goku. Had just turned around and stalked out into the woods without a backwards glance, as if he had known exactly where to go.

"Damnit," he whispered. Even the dragon knew more than he did at this point. He was feeling more and more useless by the minute.

Hakuryuu cooed quietly and rubbed its head against Gojyo's wrist. The red-head only sighed and patted the dragon one last time before dropping his hand away.

_The only thing I know for certain is what nightmare I'm going to walk into when I find Hakkai. And I have no idea if I'm going to be able to pull him out of a dream like that. Even now, even dead, Kanan has an incredible hold on him. He might prefer dying to waking up._

Gojyo didn't know what he would do if it came to that.

"Lead on," he said, and the gentle creature fluttered its wings and continued leading the way. He had no choice but to follow.

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_A/N: Thank you so much for all of the reviews! I received seven reviews in a little over 24 hours, and that's the most I've ever gotten in such a short amount of time on one story! I love you all so much!_

**Yest: **_You really think mine is that good? You flatter me! Personally, I think D-chan beats me soundly by a mile, but I'm so glad I've made it to the top of your lists!_

**Eat a Peach**: _I've always thought that the interaction between Sanzo and Gojyo was an interesting one – the way they seem to hate each other and yet support and respect each other at the same time. I hope I've managed to keep that attitude in this chapter as well._

**Blades of Ice**_: Don't feel bad if you thought you missed the story – I had only just put up those four chapters the night you read and reviewed it. S'all good. :)! I hope this update meets your satisfaction!_

**keistje**_: You are my love-child! Thank you so much for leaving all those reviews! I angsted over all the scenes to make sure I had the characters as close to IC as I could, and I'm glad I managed to do it well! I had originally left out the lines that involved Goku pulling Sanzo out of his nightmare, but it does feel better with that part in there, don't you think? Goku pulled him out of the trap with the demonic armor, so it felt only right that he could do so in other situations, even if he's not consciously aware of what he's doing. Hakkai's interaction with kudzu was tough at first, because I had no idea what kudzu looked like. Did you know that it's literally eaten half of the southern __United States__? I live too far south in Florida to have seen it, but since I've started this fiction I've wanted sooo bad to take a trip up north to find out what it's like. The pictures you can find on the net are amazing! I've got about three or four chapters left to this story, but I'm afraid there'll be no pairings. Well, not the kind that you can see without blinking – I wanted to keep it as close to Minekura's style as possible, with only hints of the traditional Gojyo/Hakkai and Sanzo/Goku pairings. It's more fun to skirt around their emotions without stating full on what those emotions mean. Hope you enjoy this chapter!_


	6. SECTION SIX

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they did. sigh...

Sorry that this one has taken a little more time to bring out. I've recently changed my diet, and it's bloody _amazing_ just how much one or two sodas a day can boost your energy. I haven't had any caffeine since Tuesday, and boy am I feeling it. I found it difficult to close this one as well, but I'm hoping to make up for that in the next chapter. No real spoilers here, except for brief mention of Hakkai's background. PG-13 for Gojyo's potty mouth. Sorry if this chapter seems like little more than a filler.

Also: I really wish I could read/write/speak Japanese. I want to have a name for the killer plant (other than _kudzu_), like the _ninjingka_ does. Only I really suck and have no idea what kind of name to give it. Anyone have any ideas? It's not like the whole story hinges on a name, but I'd like to have something proper to call it. I'd appreciate the help! :3

Review comments on the bottom.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

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SECTION SIX

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Sanzo was tired. Everything hurt – his muscles, his bones, his hair, his nails, his teeth. Everything throbbed in time to the beat of his heart, to the rush of blood through his veins. A headache loomed in the back of his skull, hot and heavy like the air in this godforsaken forest, ready to crash down and overwhelm his senses the moment he was distracted. The second he paused in his effort to keep the beast at bay, he knew it would drop him on the spot like a sledgehammer to the temple. Already he could feel its hungry fingers creeping down his spine, pinching the nerves at the base of his neck. When it came on, no amount of pain killers would help him.

His only defense against it was the fact that he simply didn't have the time or the luxury to have a headache right now. When this was all over and done with, he'd lie down and let the pain run its course. Preferably after a hot bath and a meal, not necessarily in that order.

It would help, though, if he had a cigarette. Unfortunately, he hadn't thought to nick Gojyo's lighter before separating from him.

_Damn the luck_, he thought, and ducked an overhanging branch.

Sanzo honestly couldn't admit that he knew where he was going. Not in a physical sense, anyways; his knowledge of woodscraft had expanded exponentially in the time since he'd been set on his mission from the gods, but what he knew really only worked if he could see the sky. As it was, the sky was locked away from his sight, covered by an oppressive tapestry of tree canopy and darkness. He could only see far enough ahead to keep from getting smacked in the face by random branches, and had to feel forward carefully to keep from tripping on roots hidden from his sight. What direction he was heading in and what lay at the end of his path were unknown to him.

In another sense, though... with the sense that had alienated him from other people for his whole life, the sense that allowed him to manipulate the Maten-kyomen and detect the _youryoku_ of most demonic creatures, the sense that he hated referring to as spirituality or the 'sixth sense'... in that sense, he knew exactly where he was going. In that instinctive way that was not quite instinct, he knew exactly what lay ahead of him: Goku and the main root of the kudzu vine. Or... whatever one would call the main body of a plant with so many appendages. He knew (again, in that instinctive way) that what he had blasted away when waking from his dream, and when rescuing Gojyo, was nothing more than a small part of the whole. What he killed, and what Gojyo would soon kill, wouldn't harm the kudzu at all unless the main body was taken out. He could still feel the raw hunger that dominated the senses of the plant, coming closer with every step. It was up there, somewhere. Somewhere close.

So was Goku, caught in his own nightmares. Sanzo was still unnerved (and yes, perhaps even a little confused, much as he hated that particular state) by the mixed messages he was receiving from the youth. In his own interaction with the kudzu, he had heard the boy call out to him as he had while still locked away in Mount Gogyo – terrified, lonely, cold, hungry. A constant wash of pitiful emotions, interspersed with random pleas for food or comfort, demands of '_come find me_' and the strange statement of '_you promised_'. The last he hadn't heard often, but to this day it still confounded him.

Upon waking, the odd connection Goku had with him was back to normal – or at least as normal as it had been since Sanzo had released him from his mountain prison. Just a silent watchfulness, a _knowing_; occasionally emotions would get through, when Goku was particularly distraught over something, but even that was pale and washed out compared to the flux of thoughts that had reached him before.

And then, in Gojyo's dream, the complete one-eighty in emotions: distraught, yes, and frightened, but rejecting any form of comfort or contact. Before, it had been like a pull on a string (_come find me, hurts, come find me_), but while in that nightmare it was like being brought up against a brick wall, pushed away by a relentless current. Goku hadn't wanted to be found; it had almost been like he _wanted_ to remain lost.

Gojyo had been an incredible distraction, particularly when he lost his temper, but through the exchange Sanzo had managed to find the elusive thread of Goku's presence again – still a silent watcher, hidden in the background, but still forcing away any kind of contact. No distraught emotions were making their way through, because the youth had (no doubt unconsciously) clamped down so hard on his end of the link that none could possibly leak out. Sanzo hadn't noticed it before because he hadn't even thought to touch the fragile tie. He rarely ever had to.

All the same, he could not help but berate himself for such thoughtlessness. He did so in a tiny voice that was easily pushed aside in favor for thoughts of how many shots he could put into the kudzu vine before it stopped twitching, and how many more he would put in just be on the safe side. And though he was well aware that noticing this fact earlier would have brought him to Goku's side no sooner, the knowledge didn't make his failure sting any less.

_Stupid monkey_, he thought angrily. _You're supposed to take care of yourself. I'm not your goddamn caretaker. I shouldn't have to rescue you every time you throw yourself into the fire._

But here he was, doing just that. Regardless of the fact that, more and more often, it was Goku pulling _him_ out of the fire, when he had gotten in too deep. In many ways it was a slap in the face for his pride, but in other ways it pleased him inordinately. One less person to worry about, one less person whose back he'd have to watch. One less person for him to worry about saving.

It appeared that Goku was still just an irritating brat, though. Just when it appeared that he would be able to take care of himself, he went and got himself tangled with a killer plant – and not just any part of that plant, but the part closest to the root of said plant, where Sanzo was probably going to have the most difficultly getting to him. But that was an adequate way to describe Goku, wasn't it? Difficult. Damn right he was difficult. _Stupid monkey_.

The silence of the forest was becoming more and more oppressive. Any sound would be better than this nothingness, even Goku's constant whining for food. Especially Goku's whining – hearing the boy would at least assure Sanzo that Goku was safe.

A particularly large oak blocked his path, the boughs twisted and bent with years of long life, ferns and moss caked deep in the ancient seams of bark. He skirted a limb that dipped down and rested on the ground, the leaves scraping against his robes and the ferns whispering from the disturbance he caused. Beyond the tree was a natural clearing, where several pines had fallen from rot or from lack of sunlight, the trunks thrusting splintered fingers into the sky. The light from the full moon above cast sharp shadows, bleaching the color from the tall grass and scattered branches, dying everything in shades of white and gray. The forest that surrounded the clearing was a pitch black wall that offered no clue as to its contents, daring him to reenter once he had escaped into the moonlight.

Sanzo stayed where he was, in the diluted shadows beneath the old oak, not in darkness or in light. The headache that had plagued the edges of his sense was abruptly gone, the unexpected surge of adrenaline pushing the pain aside. His pistol weighed heavy in his hand, and he touched his index finger to the trigger, gently, as a reminder that he was indeed armed and capable of protecting himself.

But was he truly?

On the other side of the clearing, out in plain sight, stood a god. The moon dyed everything in shades of white and gray, but the eyes that met his were still that mocking shade of blue and gold.

"Hello again, Konzen," Homura said softly.

---

If there was one thing Gojyo had learned about Hakkai over the three years he'd lived with the man, it was that Hakkai never did anything by halves. To the innocent observer, Hakkai was the quiet, unobtrusive sort, who watched his P's and Q's and always picked up after himself, held open doors for ladies and didn't frequently curse, '_sankyuu_' this and '_sumimasen_' the other. It was a remarkably efficient mask for what really lay under the surface: the fact that Hakkai could be a seriously cruel son-of-a-bitch when he chose to be, and that when Hakkai felt like blowing something up, he blew it up _good_. With his serene green-eyed friend, it was all or nothing, blood all over the place or spotlessly clean. Gojyo had never, ever seen Hakkai do something halfway.

Apparently that little attribute (good or bad, Gojyo had yet to decide) also extended to how Hakkai preferred to be eaten by carnivorous plants: all at once or in tiny bites. It seemed he preferred the 'all at once' method.

The kudzu hissed and rattled in frenzy, the thick rubbery vines sliding over each other in the darkness like a nest of snakes. Dead leaves and debris were scattered all over the ground from Gojyo's efforts at weed-whacking, and from beneath the mess he could barely make out Hakkai's limp form. Another vine ventured out of the underbrush towards him, and the red-head cleanly snipped off the tip with the wide paddle-blade at the end of his _shakujou_. What had been cut off died instantly, the large hairy leaves browning and withering into shapeless husks, the remaining portion of the plant withdrawing into the shadows. More kudzu crept through the canopy overhead, the pin-prick light of the moon dancing strobe-like across the forest floor. It was horribly distracting, but Gojyo didn't dare strike any of the plant above him unless it attacked from that direction. The last thing he wanted to do was unknowingly cut a supporting branch and cause the whole thing to tumble down on top of him.

Hakuryuu had disappeared the instant they had found Hakkai, but that eased his mind, rather than upset him. He had half expected the dragon to do something stupid, like try and set the vines on fire to free its master. That would be an interesting tactic to try, but Gojyo had a feeling they'd burn the forest down before they'd even singe the demonic plant. And he didn't want to waste his lighter fluid. But the only white he saw was that of the moonlight creeping through the twisting leaves overhead, and he was thankful that the beast had the good sense to get out of the way. Hakuryuu had, after all, been the only one who had escaped the clutches of the kudzu vine.

_Guess that makes Hakuryuu smarter than all the rest of us_, he though in amusement. He wondered how Sanzo would react to that insinuation, and made a mental note to make mention of this fact later on.

More vines slithered in his direction, and he twisted his weapon to slice off the invading tips of each one, dancing carefully around the fallen body of his friend. There was still kudzu attached to Hakkai, and he was even more careful not to damage those stalks - he could see where one sucker had attached itself to Hakkai's cheek, and a spear-like bouquet of purple blossoms obscured what portions of his face were visible. The whole place stunk like a wine factory, the sickly sweet scent of grapes rotting in the sun. Gojyo knew he would be smelling grapes on his hair and clothing for days after this, and he probably wouldn't be able to eat the fruit for at least a month.

"You always make things unnecessarily difficult on me, you bastard," he muttered to Hakkai, driving off yet another tangle of vines. Hakkai didn't bother to answer.

It took some time before he could convince the kudzu that he wasn't worth the effort of eating. It still hissed and whispered at him from where it hid in the darkness and in the canopy overhead, but it did eventually stop attacking. He wasn't entirely sure why it _didn't_ just drop down on top of him like a ton of bricks, but the half-demon wasn't going to question things too deeply. Plants weren't, after all, at the top of the food chain (in normal situations, at least); if they had any form of intelligence at all, they would have taken over the world a long time ago.

Keeping one eye on the surging darkness around him, Gojyo slowly knelt next to his friend, the _shakujou_ held ready in his right hand. Moonlight flickered over the clearing, and the vibrant green of Hakkai's shirt was bleached pale where the light reached and black where it didn't. What he could see of the fallen man's skin was sickly white, and the one hand that protruded out from under the twitching herbage looked bone-like and frail.

_Touch him. Somehow, that pulled me into your dream. _

_You'd better be right, Sanzo_, the half-demon thought malevolently. _Or I swear to god I'm going to steal all your goddamn cigarettes and throw them on the fire._

He reached out with his free hand, wrapping it around the too-thin hand of his friend. The kudzu's rattling escalated in agitation (or in anticipation?), and the instant Hakkai's cold skin touched his, he saw –

_ Be a good boy and stay still, Gojyo... mama will make it quick... just... _

_...just stay still..._

- darkness. Absolute, complete, utter darkness.

"Fuck a duck," Gojyo swore. _Who the hell turned off the lights?_

It was then that he realized the hissing anxiety of the kudzu had vanished, and his voice echoed through the pitch blackness the way he imagined it would in a tomb. The last stirring vibrations of his voice faded away, slowly, and then there was nothing to greet his ears: an absolute silence to match the darkness that met his eyes.

He could still feel his weapon in his grip, the pole smooth and slightly slippery from sweat. The air itself weighed heavily on his shoulders and in his chest, humid, pressing against his eardrums and making it hard to breathe. He swallowed reflexively, and felt his ears pop; took a slow breath through his mouth, tasting the moldiness of a place never well aired out, sour; exhaled and took another slow breath through his nose, and nearly gagged as the offensive scent of death, pungent and altogether too sweet, overrode his senses.

The scent of blood. And not just a little blood, but a fucking _lot_ of blood. Gallons of it. Dozens of people must have died in the very spot he stood in for the smell to be so strong. He could easily picture the eviscerated corpses of twenty or more men or women or both, blood sprayed on the walls and puddling on the floors, broken hands flung out as if begging for salvation or a quick death or both.

What kind of weirdo dream of Hakkai's had he just stepped into?

_At least it worked,_ Gojyo decided after a moment of pondering. _Whatever this dream has to do with, at least I'm here to pull Hakkai out of it. Now I just have to find out where he is –_

The image of the death imagined around him suddenly made him very hesitant to take a step without any way to see where he was going. Gojyo _really_ didn't want to step in anyone's discarded guts. Not only was it disrespectful for the dead, but it was actually kinda nasty.

He dug his free hand into his pocket, pulled out his Zippo, and brought the small flame into being with a quick snap of his wrist. The metallic _click_ echoed through the darkness, ridiculously loud in comparison to the absolute silence it was competing against. At first he couldn't see anything, for his eyes were not quick to adjust to the relative brightness of his lighter; but once they did, the red-head was forced to swallow down another urge to gag.

The picture he had conjured up in his head wasn't too far from the truth. There were six... seven... at least ten men scattered around the confines of the stone room he stood in, their bodies twisted and broken in the cruel embrace of death. The circle of light cast by his lighter was small, but large enough to illuminate the way the blood had seeped into the cracks between the flagstones, the delicate arc of blood against the wall – a jugular sliced open here, a man thrown against the stone wall there. There were weapons on the floor as well, indicating that these men had been ready to fight, if not willingly, but none of them showed signs of a successful strike. Whoever had blown through this room appeared to have done so without receiving a single hit in return.

On the other side of the room lay an open door, and he could just barely see that there were steps leading down beyond the threshold. Over the door, carved in the stone itself, was a standard that Gojyo recognized instantly, although he had never seen it before: an open eye.

The demon of a hundred eyes. The Centipede King.

Hyakuganmaoh.

Gojyo began to swear, but cut the words off before they could leave his lips. He should have known better than to let his imagination serve him a different reality than the one expected. If the kudzu vine fed off of their greatest fears, their darkest nightmares, then there was only one thing that Hakkai would be dreaming about: the two-month period after his lover, his sister, Kanan, was delivered up to the Crow Clan and later given to Hyakuganmaoh himself. The two months in which Cho Hakkai, then Cho Gonou, had slaughtered half a village, all but a few of the Crow Clan, and the entire clan of the Centipede King, down to the last babe in its cradle. All those deaths, a thousand demon lives and a few hundred human lives, all to save a woman who had taken her life when she was just outside of his grasp.

Gojyo raised his lighter higher, ignoring the obscene way the blood sparkled in the flickering rays of the small flame. Through that door and down those steps lay Cho Gonou, he knew that now: Gonou and the woman he could never give up, no matter how many years she had lain dead, if not buried.

Hakkai would smile and joke and pretend everything was okay, and Gojyo would joke along with him, but he knew that inside Hakkai had never gotten over the deaths he had caused. Each life lay heavily on the other man's soul, and sometimes the weight was too much to bear. In the year following Gonou's death and Hakkai's birth, the red-head had expected multiple suicide attempts, and was always glad that they never came. Hakkai was more than capable of killing himself out of guilt when everyone else had their back turned.

Now, though... now that they were back in the past, back when the blood was still wet to the touch, would Gojyo have even the slightest chance of competing against a woman long dead?

_I don't know,_ he told himself honestly. _I don't know what kind of hold I might have on him here. Will he even remember me? This happened days before I found him on the road, guts hanging out and bleeding to death. Will he recognize me, or will he try to kill me, seeing me as just another demon in his way?_

Gojyo didn't know what he would do if Hakkai tried to attack him. He had his weapon, but... could he consider turning it on his own friend? Would he even be capable of defending himself? It wasn't just beginner's luck that allowed a mild-mannered school teacher to slaughter a thousand demons, many of them well-taught in the ways of war and combat. Hakkai was a ridiculously skilled opponent, even when he was fighting without the use of his _chi_. Gojyo faced the very real possibility that he would be forced to fight his friend, and could quite possible lose.

_But you can't die in dreams_, he reminded himself, perhaps a bit too quickly. _Even if I'm forced to fight him, I don't have to worry about going easy. I can't kill him, and he can't kill me. It'll be fine. I just have to find him and wake his happy ass up. Nothing to it._

_You think we could have died in there? _

_ I don't know._

Gojyo scowled and forced Sanzo's voice out of his head, just as he forced out the sight of those broken bodies that hovered at the edges of his circle of light. He couldn't afford to be hesitant at this point. Every second he dawdled was a second that was tallied in the kudzu's favor. Sanzo would never let him live it down if he let Hakkai get eaten by a rabid grape vine. He wouldn't let _himself_ live it down.

"Okay," he said aloud, exhaling harshly. He just had to go down those steps and make it to Hakkai's side. Then he would deal with things as they came.

Nothing to it.

"Okay," he said again, and stepped forward. One step, two steps, three steps; he carefully avoided the body of a demon sprawled in his path, stepping over the out-flung arms and the puddles of blood. His boots stuck to the floor nonetheless, slurping loudly in the silence, leaving bloody prints where the flagstones were left bare. Gojyo closed his eyes and his ears and moved on without looking downward, keeping the paddle-blade of his weapon up off the floor, keeping his gaze fixated on the doorway that would lead him down into the dungeon.

He lowered the lighter when he reached the stairs, ignoring the handprints smeared on the wooden door. It was a fair way to the bottom, but he could see the bold outline of light beneath a closed door. There was no sound except that of his breathing, the hissing of gas released and feeding the flame of his Zippo, and just barely that of fire crackling on the heads of unseen torches. Down those steps and through that door lay Hakkai, Cho Gonou and the dead woman of his dreams, possibly in a well-lit room, no doubt surrounded by corpses and blood. That was where the kudzu was going to attack.

God this was going to hurt. If the plant decided to use Kanan in order to attack Hakkai...

Gojyo grit his teeth and tightened his grip on the lighter, ignoring the heat that threatened to blister his thumb. He hadn't gone through all of this shit just to watch Hakkai let himself get killed by his dead sweetheart. Three years of torment, watching the man slowly piece himself back together, waiting for the smiles that were real and hidden so efficiently among the smiles that were not. He was always watching, when Hakkai didn't realize it, watching for the subtle signs that declared depression, and working quickly to try and dispel those worrisome signs. His efforts often did no good, but it was better that he try than to sit by and do nothing at all. Allowing his fear of Hakkai's own memories to stop him from going down those steps would be as good as sitting down right now and twiddling his thumbs as he listened to the kudzu murder his best friend.

Kanan was dead, just like his mother. The dead could only haunt, not kill. And no one could die in their dreams.

There was only one thing he could do, and that was to go forward.

Gojyo released the trigger on his lighter, letting the flame die and the light around him disappear. It only took a second for his gaze to adjust, now that he knew where to look. Soon the light that seeped through the door at the bottom of the steps flared like a beacon, inviting, beckoning. He put the lighter back in his pocket, feeling the warmth through the material of his jeans.

_Okay._

He took the first step and let the stairs carry him downward.

---

**keistje:** _I love seeing your reviews; you're right, every author loves to get reviews – the more reviews a story has, the better the story tends to be, right? I only hope that someday I'll be as good a writer as to have as many reviews as you do! A Simple Kiss will remain on my favorites list for some time to come, even though I'll miss seeing it updated. Can't wait to see your next story!_

**Blades of Ice:** _Yours has to be one of the greatest compliments I've ever received – just like reading the manga-ka's work? I couldn't stop squeeing after I got your review in my mail-box. Thank you so much!_

**Shelley:** _I would love to see a picture of that particular scene. Hell, if I was an artist, I'd be drawing this out as a doujinshi instead of a fanfiction! :D!_

**VG Terra:** _Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the Homura-tachi just yet. He only had a brief part in this chapter, but I plan on having an in-depth scene with him and Sanzo after Hakkai's dream pans out. Not the next chapter, but the one after that, maybe? And yes, Goku has gotten caught up in the plant. I'll have lots of fun writing out his dream... mwahaha! :3_

**Haruka Hana: **_Such a long and intricate review really made my day! It inspired me to get up off my ass and write out the last 2k or so words of this story, even though I was dead tired. I'm so pleased that you've enjoyed this fic so far, and I hope to finish it out to your satisfaction. And yes, Goku's dream is going to be very dark and twisted indeed – isn't it lovely how we can play around with his past since Minekura hasn't exactly told us what that past is yet? XD! This will probably end up being rendered AU by the time Gaiden is finished, but I'll enjoy every minute of it all the same. So glad you reviewed!_


	7. SECTION SEVEN

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they did. sigh...

Wow. This took a long time to bring out, and I'm sorry for the wait. I got writer's block at the very beginning of the chapter – I wanted to write it from Hakkai's point of view, but he just didn't want to work with me. I ended up deleting everything in order to write it from Gojyo's point of view, and I'm... not quite sure I'm happy with it. Apologies again for letting myself get side-tracked with _Good Enough_ (which you can read on my aff .net account, if you like... a yummy 39 fic that I freely admit is my first smut. I'm quite happy with it. :3!), but with a little kick in the ass from keistje I should be finishing this story within three or four more chapters. This chapter, and the next, will be for all those 58 lovers – just don't blink or you might miss it. Got a little bit of something for everyone.

R for blood and violence and Gojyo's potty mouth. I'm not sure I described the fight scene accurately enough, but I guess it will do for now. Major spoilers for Hakkai's past. _Fear Itself_ now falls only one hundred and twenty-seven words short of a thirty-thousand word story (according to MS Word). Wow! This is by _far_ the longest story I have ever written, and I've enjoyed every second of it! Hope the ride's just as good for the rest of you!

Review comments and author notes on the bottom.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

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SECTION SEVEN

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There were thirty steps all together. Thirty short steps into oblivion – short steps that, when measured against the number of times his heart had beaten and the number of times he had inhaled and exhaled, seemed to take an eternity.

He was used to death; he had killed countless demons to date, and the blood of many of them stained his hands. There was no graceful way to kill, after all, and sometimes the only thing one could do was get in there and start busting open heads and snapping necks. The one thing that was quickest to wake him from a dead sleep was the sound of vertebra cracking (or at least a suitable facsimile of that sound), and afterwards he would usually lay awake for hours, the nerves in his palms remembering what it felt like to have muscles ripping and bones breaking beneath them.

He hadn't slept well after he'd killed his first man, or his second, or his third. He never had nightmares about killing until he'd killed his first woman – that had brought up some relatively unpleasant memories, all right. But it wasn't as if he hadn't seen his fair share (okay, so it was way _more_ than his fair share) of blood and guts and death. He knew what kind of burden it was to make the decision to kill, rather than to maim.

Truth was he _had_ started out keeping count of all the deaths he had caused, but... eventually the number grew too large to keep track of. Not when ten or twenty demons were going for his throat at the same time, and thinking too deeply only got in the way. Times like that you could only rely on instinct and the memory built into muscle and hope it'd carry you through to the end. Thinking was left for the time after the battle, when you could finally look at the blood on your hands and try to wash it off.

The blood on the walls, the shattered corpses, the stink of death – it was nothing new to him. Nothing new at all. He had faced it down and sneered at it and lit a cigarette to chase the smell out of his nostrils a hundred times before. He knew he'd do the same thing a hundred times more before he got to his destination.

Then why were the palms of his hands so sweaty? He had wiped them off against the fabric of his jeans at least twice in going down those stairs, shifting his weapon from one hand to another, carefully feeling forward so he wouldn't miss a step or try to step through the floor. Why did the sight of those dead demons, and not even a very large number of dead demons, make his gag instinct kick in? The last time he had gagged at the smell of _anything_ was the time Sanzo had attempted to boil eggs and managed to burn them. Good _god_ had that been a bad idea. But why now, when these things had never bothered him before, and why here, when what he saw and smelt wasn't even real?

Maybe it was because these memories were so tainted to begin with; maybe it was because the dreamer looked back on these memories with such disgust and self-hatred, and those emotions were filtering through to the unwilling occupant of those memories. He didn't know. He wasn't a psychologist, and he didn't know anything about how the mind worked behind the scenes. He was just a man standing in front of a wooden door studded with iron, staring at the smears of blood on its surface and reminding himself that none of it was real. He was just a man on a mission, a guy who was only trying to pull his best friend out of the clutches of a killer weed from hell. And he wasn't even talking about the _good_ kind of weed.

Gojyo swallowed and tightened his grip on the _shakujou_, at least mildly comforted by its presence. Maybe his unease – he refused to label it fear – rose from the fact that the man he knew didn't seem capable of doing the things he had done. Cho Hakkai loved children, and would never raise a hand to hurt one if he could help it. Cho Gonou had loved children as well, and had lovingly murdered them in their sleep as he swept through Hyakuganmaoh's castle like a ghost from their nightmares. Cho Hakkai would willingly allow an enemy to flee if they laid down their arms in a battle. Cho Gonou had apparently being willing to allow an enemy to flee only through death. Hakkai was mercy through life, and Gonou mercy through death. The person Hakkai was now and the person he had been as Gonou, if only for two short months, were such distinct polar opposites that _not_ fearing the man the Sanbutsushin had put to death over three years ago would probably be suicidal.

The fire had burnt out by the time Gojyo had found the ex-school teacher half-dead in a puddle of mud. The only thing he had wanted to do after that point was give his lover a proper funeral and then follow her in death. Whatever insanity that drove Cho Gonou to kill all those people, demon and otherwise, was gone by the time Gojyo had stumbled over his body.

He had lived with Hakkai for three years, nagged him about the way he stacked the glasses in the cabinets, nagged by him in return for the way the red-head used beer cans and random plates for ashtrays and how he couldn't match his socks if his life depended on it. That didn't mean he knew the man – Gojyo knew the way he moved, knew the way he spoke when he was in pain, knew when he was sleeping or staring at the ceiling just by the way he breathed – but that didn't mean that he understood the way Hakkai's mind worked.

Hakkai had walled himself off with cheerful smiles, and for years Gojyo had carefully chipped away at the facsimile, _wanting_ to be let in but respecting Hakkai's need for space. Both Goku and Sanzo had insinuated over the years that only Gojyo really understood the enigmatic human-turned-demon, but the truth was that he didn't. He wanted to, sometimes desperately so, but he didn't. His best friend was, in many ways, a complete stranger.

The half-demon didn't know what he was going to find on the other side of this door. He didn't know if he was going to find his friend or a stranger who wore his friend's face, smiled with his friend's lips. Killed with his friend's hands. Gojyo didn't know what he was going to find or how he was going to deal with it. But going forward was his only option now – going forward and dealing with things as they came. So he did.

The door, heavy as it appeared, opened easily and without sound, the hinges well-balanced and well-oiled. Flickering torchlight from beyond the threshold caught him in a square of illumination, making him squint his eyes at the sudden change in brightness. The blood on the door sparkled in the firelight, but he forced his attention away from it, towards the iron bars that stood across from him on the other side of the room he stood outside of.

There was a demon lying in a congealing mass of his own intestines between Gojyo and the iron cell, his face mercifully turned away. Nothing moved except for the flame topping the torch that was bracketed to a brick wall separating this cell from the one beside it. The cell itself was empty.

The red-head dared a step forward, shifting his _shakujou_ to a more battle-ready position. His footstep was the only sound he heard, save for his breath, save for the fire that lit his way. Nothing else dared to breathe down here, not where the air was thick with the stench of blood and piss and fear. Nothing that was smart, anyways. And he had never been one to hold his own mental capacities in high esteem.

So he took another step, and another, until he stood just on the other side of that threshold, with the blood-smeared door behind him and the blood-smeared cell block before him. There were more demons dead besides the one he was almost standing on, but fewer than he had anticipated. Only three, two of which were hidden in the shadows to his right, the only thing giving them away being the bright red and wet black that clashed sharply against the stone walls and their pale skin. The torches that had been lit on that side of the dungeon had been put out, either on purpose or through the splattering of blood, but the lack of light wasn't enough to keep him from seeing that the few barred chambers in that direction were empty as well. More cells continued on to his left, mostly unoccupied; cold stone walls surrounding them, designed to seal life away from three sides, vertical iron bars letting life in through small measured gaps on the fourth side. Gaps that were too narrow to slip through, and too wide to pretend that what was happening on the other side wasn't real.

Cho Gonou was kneeling in front of one of those cells, his long-fingered, graceful hands wrapped so tightly around the confining bars that Gojyo could see how white his knuckles were under the stain of the dried and flaking and still-wet blood.

His hair was longer – something Gojyo remembered easily from those first weeks spent with a nameless stranger that he gave his bed up for – bedraggled and uncombed and brushing against the collar of his shirt. It wasn't long enough to hide his profile, or the single eye that the half-demon could see, blankly staring forward into the cell, with the glazed intensity of a man that knew what he was seeing but refused to accept it as truth. It wasn't long enough to hide the speckling of blood on one curved cheek that had gone too long without shaving (something Gojyo had never seen once Hakkai recovered from that brutal gut injury; five o'clock shadow on that meticulous man? Never!), or the way one muscle jumped spasmodically beneath the skin of that same cheek. The tousled brown locks were not long enough to hide the one thing that Gojyo wanted to see more often but had only the occasion to see once – the rounded cartilage of an ear unadorned by the three silver limiters that were usually mistaken as a fashion statement.

Gojyo froze and held his breath, unable to tell if Gonou registered his presence or not. The silence stretched out, unbroken, and he realized that he couldn't hear Gonou breathing, either. Everything had stopped; the world stood still, unable to move again until... what, exactly? Until he woke Hakkai from this god-awful dream? Until Kanan reopened her eyes and said, "Everything's going to be okay," in which case the world would never start again?

_I can't let this control me_, he told himself, although it wasn't the firmest he had ever been. _This thing already has Hakkai in its grasp. Standing here in uncertainty like an idiot is as good as letting the damn plant win. I've got to get moving and end this._

But he didn't want to move. He honestly, truthfully, did not want to move. There were no limiters on the ear he could see, and that meant Hakkai – Gonou – had not yet killed his thousandth demon. He was not yet cursed with the legend that no one had proved true in several hundred years. Somewhere in Gojyo's stomach bloomed the idea that, being here, he was allowing _himself_ to be Gonou's thousandth kill, letting _himself_ be the catalyst to that hideous transformation, because how likely was he to defend himself from a man who had just slain a whole castle full of demons? It was a stupid, ridiculous, completely unfathomable idea, because he _wasn't_ here, _here_ was just a dream, and since he was only half-demon wouldn't he only count as half a kill? The legend called for a thousand demons, not nine hundred ninety-nine and a half, or would Heaven not really give a damn and choose to round up on the matter?

_Idiot_, he could almost hear Sanzo say in the silence of the dungeon, and he knew it was the truth. That was a retarded idea, and he was being retarded by contemplating it. He was allowing his uncertainties to get the better of him, and he realized that was out of character for him. But he couldn't... after seeing his mother in that dream, it felt so real and he... he felt _weak_. Incapable of making a difference. If he couldn't save himself from himself, how was he going to save Hakkai? He was almost tempted to say this was a matter better suited to Sanzo and his ice-cold temperament.

...no. He couldn't think that. Gojyo _refused_ to think that. Admitting that the stuck-up priest could out-do him was impossible to do, even to himself. Because it _wasn't_ true. He could do this. He had saved Hakkai once, sewed him up and healed him and brought him back from the brink of death, even when the doctor thought it might not be possible. He could do the same again. He just had to stop thinking about his mother. He had to stop thinking about how weak he was.

Hakkai needed him, and that was all that mattered.

Before the indecision could close in and smother his thoughts again, Gojyo took three quick steps forward, towards the man kneeling in front of a dirty and dank cell, refused to look at the stained and torn blue fabric that entered the corner of his vision and hissed, "Hakkai, you need to – "

But that was as far as he got, because the instant his voice broke the silence, the world started to move again. Gonou blurred into motion with the scrape of shoes on concrete, surging towards Gojyo with a speed that would have been surprising even coming from Hakkai. Instinct took over from there, and he countered the blows as quickly as he could see them: blocking the hit to his stomach with the pole of the _shakujou_ to the inside of Gonou's wrist; lurching backward from the stiffened fingers aiming to crush his trachea; catching the sweeping kick with one hand and dropping his weapon in order to snap the knee and –

Gonou let his twisting momentum carry him through the sweep, using Gojyo as a brace so he could bring his other foot up and smash the well-worn shoe into the half-demon's face. Gojyo's own strike was aborted and he was forced to let go in order to keep from being knocked down, reeling from the pain of a nearly-dislocated jaw and the surprise that Hakkai – Gonou – had executed a move he thought only Goku was flexible and fast enough to do successfully. The other man was not so agile as to land on his feet, hitting the ground on his hip with only the faintest grunt of pain; he rolled away and up to his feet and moved in to attack again without any sign of hesitation.

The red-head did his best to keep from being distracted, but the look in those piercing eyes did more than just make him fumble at his blocks; it disturbed him, upset him, to have those eyes look at him and _through_ him as though he was just another impediment to an ultimate destination. They were empty and cold and heartless. He had seen Hakkai's eyes come close to that same look, once or twice, but it was more the arch of the brow and the narrowing of the eyes – never had he seen them so empty before. _Alien_. And it was those eyes, more than the ferocity behind the strikes and the utter lack of hesitation to go for the killing sweet spots, that made him miss the hook in the gut that ultimately brought him to his knees.

_Twice in the same night_, he groaned inwardly, feeling sorry for his poor sternum, and reached out to grab Gonou's ankle and _twist_ in order to keep from being kicked in the face as well. The man went down, hitting the ground hard on his left elbow, but this did not stop him from striking out with his opposite foot and scoring another hit on Gojyo's temple. The blow made his head reel in pain and disorientation, and the bitter tang of blood in his mouth indicated he had bitten the inside of his cheek. Even that small hesitation cost him, and in an instant he found himself flat on his back, one foot twisted awkwardly beneath him, unable to breathe from the punch to his chest and the once-mild-mannered school teacher pinning him to the ground.

Gonou was ready to strike with the heel of his right hand, slender fingers curled back into the palm, the blade of his left hand cutting off the red-head's air. In that painfully quick instant before a move was made, Gojyo could see exactly what the other man would do: a single, lightning quick hit to the nose, designed to break the fragile cartilage and drive the fragments into the brain. Not necessary a fatal wound, but a debilitating one – and what, exactly, would happen to him if such a strike was successful? Would he remain trapped in this nightmare until the kudzu vine sucked up the last of Hakkai's _chi_, or would he actually... die?

He didn't want to find out. He really, really didn't want to find out. Desperately he grabbed the wrist of the hand that cut off his air, dug both his thumbs into the tense tendons, sucked in a shallow breath and hissed, "Hakkai, wake up!"

There was no sign of recognition in the eye that was visible to him, the other obscured by a veil of hair and blood. Nothing changed in that terribly blank expression of finality, and when the hand began to move forward Gojyo thought for certain that he would not be getting out of this situation.

Adrenaline levels spiked upward; he could barely discern one heartbeat from the next in his ears. The half-breed squeezed his eyes shut and all but screamed, "_Gonou, stop it!"_

Nothing happened.

Gojyo felt the blow of air on his face, but no strike came. There was no pain, and no sound save for the ragged breathing of two men. His heart thundered in his chest, beating so hard he thought his ribcage might split.

And then, hoarsely: "How do you know my name?"

The red-head risked squinting open one eye. Above him loomed Gonou, one knee pressed painfully into his stomach, with that same hand only inches away from his face. Past the bloody knuckles he could see one green eye, narrowed not in fierce determination to kill, but in curiosity and anger and frustration. Emotion had returned to those emerald depths, and the relief that surged through Gojyo's veins – because finally he had _gotten through –_ kept him from answering right away.

The lack of response did not please the other man, and he grabbed the lapels of Gojyo's vest and hauled his shoulders off the ground, which was quite painful considering the knee in the half-breed's stomach. Anger dilated the pupil in the one eye that was not hidden and colored the voice that sounded rusty and not-often used. "How the hell do you know my name?!"

"Because... " Gojyo wheezed, keeping both hands wrapped around one of those wiry wrists, "...because this has already happened!"

Thin lips turned downward in an annoyed frown, and the voice turned to deadly frost. "You speak nonsense. No one else in this castle knows who I am, I certainly do not know you, and this event has most assuredly _not_ occurred before. Now explain yourself: how do you know my name?"

"I know who you are because you told me about this," Gojyo responded desperately. Had this dream taken such deep root in his mind that Hakkai honestly thought he was in the past? Could he truly not remember the man he had lived with for over three years? "The men of the village gave up their women to the Crow Clan in order to save themselves, and you came after Kanan in order to save her, but Hyakuganmaoh raped and impregnated her, and she took your knife to kill herself – "

Fury transformed the blood-smeared face before him, the single green eye sparkling in repressed rage, and in that face Gojyo could see the man that had killed a thousand demons and a few hundred humans without any remorse or hesitation. It was a frightening visage that contrasted so sharply with the Hakkai he knew that a thread of doubt whispered through his mind, asking: _Is this really the man you know?_

"_Shut up!_" Gonou hissed, "_Don't you dare say her name!_"

But this _was_ the man he knew – this _was_ Hakkai, this _was_ the man he had fought with and fought for and _bled_ for and fucking given up his bed and _cigarettes_ for, he just had to reach out and _bring him back_.

" – she killed herself," the red-head continued, raising his voice to speak over the furious words of the other man, "Kanan is dead, she died over _three years ago_, and you're not Cho Gonou anymore, you're Cho Hakkai _Cho Hakkai!_ And this isn't _real_, Hakkai, this is a fucking dream! You're caught up in a nightmare, that's all; you've just got to wake up to get out of this!"

Silence greeted his attempts to break through; the other man continued to stare at him as though he were a bug under microscope, his eye gone blank again, all the emotion sucked dry and gone where once there was at least anger. Even furious, righteous anger was better than this critical emptiness. But at least the grip on his shirt had lessened – he could feel the tendons beneath his thumbs relaxing, and there was less weight on his stomach now as Gonou leaned back. What he wanted, though, was belief. Recognition. How could he make recognition flare back in those green eyes?

Gonou blinked suddenly, breaking eye contact and glancing off to the side, as though unwilling to continue this silent battle of wills. "How - ?"

"Believe me, Hakkai," he pressed, pulling one hand away to push himself up onto his elbow. "I don't know how this thing works. Somehow this plant, that kudzu vine, it gets into our heads and makes us relive our painful memories. This is _your_ painful memory, not a reality. You've _got_ to remember – this happened only a few days before I found you in the road, bleeding to death. And then a month later that conceited priest and his pet monkey came to take you back to Chang'An. And – "

Gonou shook his head, slowly at first, then harder, his visible eye closing and his brows furrowing in a look of pain. "Shut up," he whispered, but there was no force behind the order this time.

"Sanzo took you back to Chang'An on the orders of the Sanbutsushin, remember?" Gojyo continued, unwilling to stop now. "They 'killed' Cho Gonou and let you live on as Cho Hakkai. _Hakkai –_ that is your name. How many times do I have to say it to make you remember?"

_How many times do you think he'll say my name before he remembers it?_

"Eight times," Gonou whispered.

He pulled his hands away from Gojyo's vest, and the half-demon released his death grip on the slender wrist. With what sounded like a jarring thud, Gonou rolled off the man he was pinning down, scooting backwards until his shoulders hit the blood-stained bars of the cell. Gojyo pushed himself upwards, back into a seated position, and watched as the green-eyed man lifted his hands palm-up and stared at them. They were shaking, almost uncontrollably.

"Gojyo," he said thickly. "What... how..."

Relief spun through the red-head's veins, and he felt almost weak for it. He had finally gotten through. He had gotten through Gonou and pulled Hakkai back out. Now they just had to –

"My, my," a low voice drawled out, disturbing the silence. "Isn't this just precious."

Both he and Hakkai startled at the unexpected sound, twisting around to find out who had entered this bloody dream.

Chin Isou smiled at them from the doorway of the prison.

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_A/N: Just as a note: Hakkai, in Japanese, actually means "eight times". When Hakkai reunites with Gojyo in the series, and they take the apples and go see Goku and Sanzo, Goku starts repeating Hakkai's name in order to remember it. In the Japanese version, Hakkai asks Sanzo, "How many times do you think he'll say my name before he remembers it?" and Sanzo replies dryly, "Eight times." In this chapter, Gojyo says Hakkai's name exactly eight times out loud before Hakkai remembers him._

**keistje**_: How is it you always manage to be the first to review after I put up a new chapter? :p! I enjoyed that conversation with you, and I've thought up at least three sequels to _Good Enough_ since then. XD! You're so evil! The plot bunnies are raping my brain! How can you expect me to actually get enough sleep to write all these things down? -flails in futility!- Oh well. I'll manage somehow. Now all I have to do is bug you enough to get you to finish the first chapter of this jealous!Sanzo story you're working on. :3_

**Eat A Peach:**_ A healthy dose of Chin Isou just for you. What? Fourty-five words of Chin Isou isn't enough? Well, I suppose I'll just have to write more of him into the next chapter.... -grins evilly- And trust me, I'm thankful for every review I receive that isn't "Yor rihtin is so gud, writ more plzkthx". Oh, and I promise Goku-torture and Sanzo-angst in their respective chapters. You'll definitely get a healthy (or _more_ than healthy) dose of that. :3_

**Haruka**** Hana:**_ I love you! That name you came up with_, kyuuseishin_, is just perfect! I'm definitely going to use it. You soooo made my night when I got that review! Our boys definitely do have tangled relationships – Gojyo cares a good deal more for Sanzo than he lets on, even to himself; it was odd, in episode 44, how he was screaming for Sanzo instead of Goku when Homura attacked... whoops, little bit of a spoiler there. :P Guess little things like that fuel the fire of 53 fanatics, eh? I can guarantee that Hakkai will not die in his dream, but I cannot guarantee that neither of them will remain unhurt... hehheh. _

**Blades of Ice:**_ Sorry that I laid another cliffhanger on you, and that nothing has really happened in Hakkai's dream yet. :( I promise to make up for my transgressions in the next chapter. I _was_ planning on writing this through to the end, but I had gone so long without updating that I decided to just split the dream into two chapters. Hope that doesn't disappoint you too much._

**Merf:**_ I'm glad you like this so much! The kudzu plant really does exist; it was originally brought to __America__ by the Japanese way back in the day, to celebrate __America__'s 100th anniversary. It was brought over first in a garden, then was used to help stop erosion in the south. But because the kudzu's natural enemies were not brought with it, it completely took over the landscape, growing as much as a foot a day during summer months. This earned it the nickname "mile-a-minute vine", "foot-a-night vine", and "the vine that ate the South". James Dickey even wrote a poem about it: "_In Georgia, the legend says/ That you must close your windows/ At night to keep it out of the house./ The glass is tinged with green, even so..."_ However, it isn't carnivorous. We'd sure need help if it was!_

**Me-Nuriko:**_ Thanks for leaving the comments! Homura's intentions are, of course, solely based on making Goku stronger. This is supposed to take place before episode 44, after all. I'm glad that I got Sanzo and Gojyo's interactions just right, and that I managed to make another fan squeal. Hope you enjoy this chapter as well!_


	8. SECTION EIGHT

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they did. sigh...

I finished the chapter! Finally! I ended up writing out the beginning and end before the middle, because the fight scene kept tripping me up. I think it sucks, but if you overlook that, the chapter is pretty good. I especially like the ending, and would love to see an image of Hakkai and Gojyo -beeps out spoilers-. Whoops! Can't ruin it before anyone can even read the chapter! ;P!

I foresee only two more chapters: Goku's dream and the ending. However, there is a possibility that I will split Goku's dream into two chapters as well, because I also have to get Homura in there... but if it feels better as a longer chapter, I may just keep it all in one file. I have no clue how much longer this is going to take, though... writing about death while my best friend's father is on his death bed just feels... wrong. However, I do promise that I will _not_ abandon this story, as I have done so many others, and eventually it _will_ get done. I just don't know when.

R for blood and violence and Gojyo's potty mouth. Hakkai even gets a swear word in there. Spoilers for Hakkai's past. All but two lines that Chin Isou utters in this chapter I took from the English anime. This chapter is longer than the other seven, but only by about a thousand words. Hope that makes up for the shitty fight scene and the length of time it is taking for me to finish this story. u.u''

Review comments on the bottom.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

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SECTION EIGHT

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"My, my," a low voice drawled out, disturbing the silence. "Isn't this just precious."

There were many people in life that Gojyo hated. He hated his father for running off and dumping him on a woman who didn't want him and a brother who didn't really know what to do with him. He hated whoever it was that first spouted the line that "a child born from both demon and man will bring nothing but misfortune and pain." He hated the retard who had to go try and resurrect a demon five-hundred-years dead. He hated men who beat on women, and sometimes he even hated Sanzo (though that was a twisted love-hate relationship indeed).

But if there was anybody in the world that he could pin down as the one person he hated the most, despised with the deepest, blackest part of his heart, Gojyo would have to say that person was the blue-eyed, smirking demon that now only existed in Hakkai's dreams.

_Chin Isou..._

He looked different from what Gojyo remembered, but that could only be expected; when he had come upon their party gods-only-knew how many months back, he had been over three years dead and animated only by a mahjong tile and his own burning animosity. What Hakkai remembered here, though, was a man full of the confidence of arrogant youth, hair worn loose and long, the flowing robes of an aristocrat adorning his lanky frame. Chin Isou had stood the same way when Gojyo first met him, even when wearing the clothing of a commoner – death had, apparently, frozen him in time, held him still while the rest of the world moved on without him. Chin Isou had changed his hair and changed his dress over the three years he had stalked the human who had killed him, but everything else remained the same: the eyes, the smirk, the way he folded his hands inside his sleeves and leaned back slightly at the hip. It was all the same.

Gojyo wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill the fucker _right now_.

"How _proud_ you two must be," that lazy voice continued, "to have slain every demon in this castle all by yourselves."

Chin Isou smiled wider, mockingly, like a cat playing with a mouse. Like a serpent ready to strike. Hakkai hadn't told him much about what kind of encounter he had with the son of Hyakuganmaoh, only revealing that the blue-eyed demon had been his thousandth kill and the man who inflicted the terrible wound on his stomach. But whatever kind of encounter it had been, Gojyo needed to end it now. _This_ must be the embodiment of the kudzu vine – _this_ would be how the plant would try to kill Hakkai and suck up all of his _chi_.

Damned if he hadn't dropped his weapon, though. The _shakujou_ lay discarded between where he sat and where Chin Isou stood shadowing the doorway, the paddle-blade stained with the blood of the demon-guts it had landed in. He wouldn't take but a second to get up and grab it, but the half-breed remembered all too well how fast the centipede demon was. And there was also the problem of the mahjong chips he liked to fling around. Had Chin Isou already been proficient at that, or had he picked up the trick after Hakkai had wiped out the Centipede Clan?

"No _human_ could have accomplished a feat like that all alone..." Those mocking blue eyes turned to look down at Gojyo, the reflection of torch flames flickering on the cat-like pupils. "Then again, that's probably where this little _pet_ of yours came in, hmmm? Let him do the dirty work while you sit back and reap the rewards?"

"Shut your fucking _mouth_," Gojyo hissed, and lunged for his fallen weapon. He ignored the slippery blood that had smeared on the pole of the _shakujou_, ignored the cold meat that his fingers brushed against as he half-slid across the floor and swung out with the paddle-blade while still on his knees. But the demon was no longer standing in the doorway – the red-head caught the flutter of white silks out of the corner of his eye, heard the strangled gasp and the sound of a body being forcefully thrown against the bars of a cell.

_God_damn_ he's fast!_ he thought, and spun around to see Chin Isou pinning Hakkai to the bars of the cell, the brunette's eyes wide with pain and more fear than Gojyo had ever seen him exhibit. One hand was wrapped around Hakkai's throat, the other around his upper arm, the long nails digging into the flesh and drawing blood.

"I'm _so_ happy for you," the demon murmured, completely ignoring Gojyo. His voice conveyed anything but sympathy. "Her suffering has _finally_ come to an end."

Gojyo shoved himself to his feet, preparing to let loose the sickle-blade of his weapon, but had to pause. If he attacked Chin Isou from this direction, he would risk hitting Hakkai if the demon dodged. And that would totally defeat the purpose of this little dream-expedition, wouldn't it? That meant he would need to come into close quarters with the other man, and he knew that would put him at a direct disadvantage.

Not that the odds mattered. He just had to do whatever was necessary to get this thing over and done with. So long as the demon remained distracted with Hakkai, he could -

_whispering across the floor like dark shadows _

- the fuck?

One of Hakkai's hands had wrapped itself around Chin Isou's wrist, a strange parody to how Gojyo had clung desperately to Gonou's wrist, but something in his visible eye had changed; the pain, the fear, it faded away like water down a drain, and in its place the emptiness had returned. Gonou was coming back to the surface.

The demon's smirk widened, and Gojyo could almost see tiny black strings pulling the flesh into place.

There were shadows on the floor where there should not be – as though the darkness cast by Chin Isou's form was alive. The demon murmured, "My goodness. What a terrifying look," and as Gojyo squinted harder, he could see how the shadows seemed to all be interconnected, like strings on a marionette, emerging from the black beyond the open door to flow across the stone floor into Chin Isou's shadow.

He could almost hear the sound of thousands of leaves rubbing against each other, whispering of the hunger of the kudzu vine. It whispered of Chin Isou's hunger as well, and of Gonou's hunger, and of Gojyo's hunger to just _end it all_.

He lunged forward, stabbing out with the weapon clenched tightly in his hands.

"You must – "

Green eyes widened once again, but this time it was Hakkai who was peering out, not Gonou. It was with satisfaction that Gojyo watched the hand lose its grip on the blood-speckled throat, though he especially reveled in the heavy feeling of the demon's knees going out from under him, the way the paddle-blade briefly caught on reddening silks when Gojyo levered the pole to let him fall away and off his weapon. He could not see Chin Isou's face when he landed on the stone floor in a puddle of ever-expanding blood, but he was all right with that; he was happy enough to know that he had killed the fucker, and now this nightmare would end.

The dream would end.

Hakkai sucked in a deep breath, one hand coming up to touch the minor scratches on his neck, and whispered, "Gojyo, what's happening?"

_The dream is fucking supposed to end!_

Why weren't they waking up? Where were the writhing kudzu branches and the full moon overhead? Where was the scent of leaf mold and rotting grapes? Why were they still in this bloody memory?

_Fuck you, Sanzo, you impotent Buddha-humper! Why the hell aren't things going the way you said they would?!_

"Goddamnit," the red-head mumbled under his breath, tightening his hands around the pole of the _shakujou_. He dragged his eyes away from the downed body of the centipede demon, glaring at the prison chamber around him, trying to find anything that might have changed. It figured nothing would ever be easy for him. There must be something he missed, some little detail of the dream that had been overlooked but was still crucial to their escape. After all, Chin Isou was dead, regardless of how easy the kill had been, and he _had_ to have been the embodiment of the kudzu vine, so –

"Gojyo," Hakkai whispered, but he didn't look over, squinting and trying to peer through the gloom that had suddenly descended past the door that led to the blood-streaked stairwell. He had at least been able to see the first step before, he realized; now it was as if nothing even existed past the wooden door that had been left half-open. The shadows were so complete that a solid wall of black greeted his eyes.

It had to do with the shadows, he realized. Something about the shadows and the way they had seemed to almost manipulate Hyakuganmaoh's son, like the strings on a puppet. Like they were alive... like...

"_Gojyo_," hissed the other man, urgently, and Gojyo turned to look back at his friend – and saw, from his peripheral vision, that Chin Isou was no longer lying on the floor. There was nothing left save for a bloody smear on the cobblestones.

"The fuck?" he said in disbelief. How the hell could a dead demon up and disappear when he was practically standing on the man's _clothing?_

"That's what _I_ – "

Gojyo was unable to keep his balance when Hakkai abruptly lunged forward and slammed into him, knocking them both away from the cell bars and onto the floor. He automatically curled up in an attempt to keep from hitting the back of his head on the stone floor; pain flared in his shoulder blades, briefly lighting up the darkness behind closed eyelids, stealing his breath away. It was only by instinct that he was able to keep from impaling either himself or his friend on the _shakujou_.

_What the hell was that for?_ he wanted to ask, but his lungs weren't exactly working for him at the moment. Hakkai tried to keep from landing on Gojyo, hands outstretched to smack loudly on the stone to either side of the half-demon's head, but the impact on the floor was more than enough to force the air from his lungs. It wasn't a move he had expected, and he couldn't even ascertain _why_ his friend had jumped him in such a manner.

Until he reopened his eyes, preparing to curse up a storm, and saw the mutilated corpse standing over them, pale intestines hanging out of a ripped-open abdomen and dragging on the ground, a short sword clasped in one bloody hand. He was able to see up into the chest cavity from where he was laying, glimpses of white ribs showing through the shredded flesh and organs.

The dead demon raised the sword overhead, and Gojyo tensed with a renewed surge of adrenaline.

_Holy fuck._

Instinct took over from there; he shoved Hakkai away from him and rolled in the opposite direction, tucking the long pole of his weapon close to his body. It sounded as though sparks might have flown from the impact of the sword striking the stone floor, but he didn't bother to pause and look – the half-breed got his knees underneath him and readied the _shakujou_ to block or attack.

_"Shit!"_ Hakkai said behind him, startled.

Three armed demons stood in the prison block, each showing varying causes of death. The one closest, disembowelment; one further away, a stab wound to the heart; the demon furthest had apparently had its throat slit so deeply that the muscles on one side of the neck had given way, and now the head hung on only by a thin piece of flesh. The distorted face, lolling against a shoulder, bared crimson-stained teeth at them.

_Holy shit_, he corrected his friend mentally. These three demons had been dead long before he had even come down the stairs and into this dream – how in the world could they be up and trying to attack them now?

But as the dead guards of Hyakuganmaoh lumbered towards the two dreamers, Gojyo could see the same writhing shadows that had crawled across the skin of Chin Isou; thin, barely visible strings that tugged the limbs into place and forced stiff muscles to move. They weren't alive, just animated... like marionette dolls.

The kudzu was doing this, he realized. The shadows were just like creepers, crawling across the stone floor, rubbing phantom leaves together in a kind of hissing monotone – the kudzu was forcing its way into the dream and influencing the events, bringing up new 'bad guys' to try and kill the dreamer... and the most easily accessible would be the dead demons.

Well. If Chin Isou was so easy to kill, Gojyo doubted these three clumsy idiots would give him any difficulties whatsoever.

The muscles in his shoulders protested when the half-demon twisted his weapon and let loose the long chain of the sickle-blade, aiming for the grinning demon in the back. It didn't even have a chance to bring up its sword to block before the sharp edge sliced through the remaining neck tissue. The two separated demon-parts slumped to the floor before vanishing entirely, and the sound of meat impacting on stone seemed to be the cue for everyone else to move.

The remaining two demons converged on Hakkai at the same time, moving faster than Gojyo thought an hours-dead person could move, and as a result he missed the man he was aiming for on his blade's return. There really wasn't enough room for him to bring the chain into play, and with his friend trying to defend himself against two swords at the same time... he really couldn't risk throwing out the blade and hoping Hakkai wouldn't jump into its path. That meant he could only deal with one demon at a time.

_Hope your skills are as good in your memories as they are in real life, buddy,_ he thought, and threw himself at the closest enemy.

Hakkai danced away from the gutted corpse, not allowing any strikes to make their way through his defenses, but not really blocking, either. The other demon, the one which had been stabbed, was just far enough back from the other two that Gojyo was able to maneuver his way in front of it and hinder any further progress forward. The sword rose and fell, clanging against the pole of his weapon – the red-head was forced to take a step backwards in order to brace himself against the surprising strength.

"You're almost as strong as your breath smells," he muttered, half in jest. The demon snarled and disengaged, striking out again.

Twisting backwards, Gojyo allowed the sword to swing past him, catching one arm of the demon with the curved edge of his weapon and _wrenched _– flesh tore and sinews snapped, and then blood was dripping down the polished edge of the sword as the arm was torn free and thrown to the floor. _Nasty_, he thought, and the demon (showing no signs of discomfort or pain at having been deprived a limb) immediately threw itself back into the fray.

Shadows fluttered across the flesh of the corpse, and by their movements Gojyo was able to predict which way the sword would swing and when; he blocked a strike, stepped backwards to try and make more room to bring the sharp edges of his weapon into play, and slipped on the arm he had chopped off and discarded on the floor. His opponent followed closely, refusing to give him the space he needed, and swung the sword more like a baseball bat than a weapon. Had Gojyo the balance, he could have used that opening to dispatch of the kudzu-animated-corpse, but as the bones rolled out from under his foot, he could only bring the pole of his _shakujou_ up to block.

The force behind the strike was impressive, coming from a one-handed dead man, and Gojyo found himself thrust back against the bars of another cell. Light briefly obscured his vision when his skull connected with the iron rods, but he refused to allow another moment of hesitation; he twisted the weapon in his hands, thrusting out blindly with the sickle-blade, and was rewarded with the sound and sensation of a body being impaled.

The red-head blinked rapidly, struggling to clear his vision. Demon number two hung grotesquely from the blade of the _shakujou_, the blood-smeared sword dropping from limp fingers to clang loudly on the floor. Shadows no longer clung to the pallid skin, leaving the demon as empty and lifeless as it had been when he first entered the room.

_Finally_, he thought with disgust, and angled the pole away from him so the body would slide off the blade. The corpse vanished before it could even hit the floor, fading away in a puff of smoke that made one wonder if it had even been there in the first place. The throbbing in his head, though, served well as a reminder of the kudzu-doll's once-presence.

Gojyo leaned back against the bars, brushing tangled hair out of his eyes, and glanced over to where Hakkai was handling the third, previously eviscerated, demon. In only three blows he had disarmed the creature, knocked it down, and snapped its neck – the sound of vertebra cracking fairly exploded inside the stone prison block, and Gojyo couldn't help but wince. But that was the last one; without the corpses, he and Hakkai were the only ones left in the dream. As soon as Hakkai released the corpse and it faded into nothingness, they'd be out of this place and back into the _real_ world. And he'd be more than happy to start in on some weed-whacking.

The demon dropped away from slender fingers, vanishing, and Hakkai straightened, wiping his hands on his pants with a grimace.

_Any second now,_ Gojyo thought with satisfaction. _About time I get a fucking cigarette, too..._

A strangled gasp echoed against stone, a combination of pain and surprise. Hakkai whirled about, instantly assuming a defensive stance, his one visible eye narrowed against the blood that poured from a gash on his forehead. But Gojyo could see his friend was not otherwise injured – where had that sound come from?

Soft fingers ghosted against the skin of his neck, underneath his jawbone. Under normal circumstances, the half-breed would have found the touch erotic, perhaps even ticklish, but for some reason he only felt cold and... numb. He could feel the reassuring weight of the _shakujou_ in his palm, but could not _feel_ the blood he knew was smeared beneath his fingers and coating the pole of his weapon.

"You cannot have him," a sweet voice whispered in his ear, airy and feminine. "He will always be mine, even in death."

_That_ was when the pain hit him, in the same instant that Hakkai's eyes widened in fear and disbelief, in the same instant that he could feel the blade being withdrawn from his back. He had been wrong, he realized now; those three demons hadn't been the only corpses in the prison block that the kudzu could animate. There was still Kanan, Hakkai's sister and lover, who had stolen his knife and used it to kill herself and the half-demon growing in her belly. Kanan, whose cell he had inadvertently put his back to without even realizing she was still within it. Kanan, who had just stabbed that same knife through the small of Gojyo's back and probably through his left kidney.

Pain overrode his ability to hear any more, but he could still see Hakkai's lips move as the brunette shouted his name.

Pain overrode his ability to think, to breathe, but he could still feel the fury of being taken down from behind like that, anger that swept through his veins with the same ferocity and liquid heat as the fire in his side.

Pain may have numbed his hands and threatened to drop him to his knees, but the rage was stronger – rage at this dream, at the woman behind him who had chosen suicide over life, at his own weaknesses, but most especially at the plant that was pulling the strings behind this nightmare.

Gojyo reversed the _shakujou_ and thrust it backwards through the bars of the cell, and his wound screamed with the shuddering impact of the paddle-blade sinking into flesh. He could not see Kanan's face, did not know what she looked like, but all he could think of was the shapeless black shadow that had been his mother's face in his own dream, the way her eyes had burned like blue fire, the _hunger_ that had shone through before Sanzo had blown her away with the banishing gun, and the way the world had vanished in a wave of light –

"_Gojyo!"_

The air around him was fairly vibrating with the rattle of bones, the hissing of serpents. The ground beneath his hands surged and writhed, refusing to give him enough purchase to push himself up off his stomach – _When did I fall onto my face?_ – and everything was black, so dark that he couldn't see the nose in front of his face much less the area he was in. He couldn't breathe; burning, debilitating pain flowed through his veins with every heartbeat, with every blink and with every twitch of his body. And he was so fucking _tired_...

"_Gojyo, get up!"_

_Goddamnit_, he thought irritably. _I just want to go to sleep..._

_Now hold still. It'll only hurt for a second... just a pinprick..._

..._mamma will make it quick, just... just hold still..._

Pure, animalistic fear bit through him, and Gojyo squelched any further urge to sleep. No way was he going to fall asleep again... not with the image of his mother looming in the backdrop of his mind, axe held high overhead, bright blue eyes burning with rage and sadness and hunger, just waiting for him to let his exhaustion get the better of him again...

Something brushed against his cheek and he automatically flinched away from it, forcing his burning, aching arms to push him up off the ground. He tried to ignore the pain, tried to override it with adrenaline and the fight-or-flight urge, but only partially succeeded. Sparks of lightning were racing up and down his spine, up into the base of his skull and down into his legs, but he made himself move anyways, getting his knees underneath him and scuttling sideways as fast as he could manage. The half-breed didn't go very far, though, before a set of warm arms wrapped awkwardly around his torso.

_"Hold still, Gojyo. I can't see you in this darkness."_

The words took a moment to reach him through the heady fog of pain, and then it took a moment longer before his brain could process the words into information he could understand. It was Hakkai – Hakkai's arms were wrapped around him, Hakkai's breath on his shoulder. The noise in the air was lessening, he realized, fading from a vicious tangle of angry serpents hissing to the muted backdrop of wind blowing through trees.

"What – " Gojyo tried, but his voice didn't want to work; the sound that issued from his throat sounded more like an angry frog than like any semblance of a word. His tongue felt swollen and heavy in his mouth, as numb as his fingertips and lips. As numb as everything on his body felt, in-between the waves of pain.

"I don't – " Hakkai's voice caught, and the red-head could feel how heavy the other man was breathing – panting, really, as though he had run for miles and miles until he simply couldn't lift his feet to go another step. He sounded weak. "I don't know. The dungeon..."

Hakkai's voice caught again, but this time he made no effort to continue. _The dungeon?_ Gojyo thought, and then it came back to him, hazily – Hyakuganmaoh's castle, the corpses, the blood-stained cells, Chin Isou, and the blade that Cho Gonou had used to slice his way through a thousand demons, the blade that had killed his lover and sister and that had ripped its way through Gojyo's back...

The pain flared up again, just to remind him that those events were no dream. Or rather, had occurred in a dream that was all too real.

"Fuck," he whispered, and between one blink and the next – not that he could see anything to begin with – the half-demon could feel himself being cradled against Hakkai's chest, a lean arm wrapped around his shoulders. One of the buttons on the other man's shirt was poking into his eye.

It was funny, he thought lazily, how this whole situation seemed so reversed. _He_ was supposed to be the one who was doing the saving, after all, and look how good a job he had done. Not only had he been unable to save himself from his own mother (both in truth and in nightmare), he had been unable to find Hakkai without Hakuryuu's help and was unable to save the same man from his nightmare without royally screwing things up. First Sanzo had needed to save him, and now Hakkai, who had been in the kudzu's nightmarish cocoon for gods-knew-how-long, was saving him from... something. What the hell was he doing in Hakkai's arms, anyways? Whatever the reason was, he felt more comfortable than he had in hours. Even the pain that managed to reach him felt subdued and far away.

"Gojyo?" Hakkai whispered, and his voice sounded faint, even though the half-breed could feel the word thrumming in his chest.

"Um," was his intelligent reply. He felt too secure to say or do anything more.

"I've stopped the bleeding as best I could," the other man continued, and it was then that Gojyo could feel the stickiness of blood on his back and stomach, making his pants cling to his legs. Hakkai's other arm, the one that was not wrapped around Gojyo's shoulders, was shoved up under his shirt and vest, the long-fingered hand resting lightly on the small of his back. The reality of him being stabbed smacked back into him, and the warmth and security of hearing Hakkai's heart beat beneath his cheek disappeared under the swell of worry and fear that Hakkai might be hurt as well.

The half-breed got an arm underneath him, the inside of his wrist brushing against Hakkai's hip, and pushed himself away from the other man. The twinge of pain that rode up his spine was not nearly enough to incapacitate him this time.

"Are you okay?" he whispered, straining his eyes to see through the darkness. Little good it did him – outlines were becoming clear, but he still could not _see_ Hakkai, only _feel_ him through the heat of his body and the shallow, quick breaths that puffed on his cheek.

"The vine..." the other man said slowly, "... I think it's gone."

Gojyo held his breath, straining his ears instead of his eyes. Silence greeted them, the same absolute, deadening quiet that felt like it was pressing against the eardrums. Nothing rattled or hissed or scurried through the underbrush. Nothing moved except for the rise and fall of Hakkai's chest.

That was a relief. He had half-expected they would need to run from the kudzu, same as when Sanzo had pulled him from his own nightmare, but if the plant decided to withdraw by itself, he certainly would not be one to argue. Not having to deal with a rabid vine was one less thing the red-head had to worry about. He took another breath, through his nose, and was pleased to find that the scent of the kudzu blossom, while still strong, was no where near as heady as it had been when he was trying to hack the plant away to get to Hakkai... before he had gone through the whole nightmare bullshit. How long ago had that been, anyways? A few minutes? An hour? There was no way to tell in this darkness.

"Are you okay?" Gojyo asked again, his voice strengthening. After having been chewed on by a _chi_-eating plant for several hours and then turning around and using more_ chi_ to heal Gojyo's wounds, the man _had_ to be exhausted...

Several more breaths puffed on his cheek before the other man shifted, and then he felt the warmth of Hakkai's cheek on his shoulder, felt the hand beneath his shirt slide upward and tighten its hold beneath his ribs.

"I'm tired," he whispered. "Very tired."

Gojyo sat up more, wrapping one arm around his friend, and rested his free hand on the back of Hakkai's neck. In the distant darkness he could see the faint red glow of two small eyes coming closer, and soon the pale white shape of Hakuryuu had alighted on the ground by his knee. The poor creature mewled pathetically, rubbing its head against Hakkai's hip, but received no response.

The brunette's breathing was slow and deep now, and his body was limp and relaxed. Although Gojyo still couldn't see very well, he was better able tell where the gaps in the canopy were, where the moon overhead had become covered with clouds. He could feel the beat of Hakkai's heart against his shoulder, and where his arm was wrapped securely around his friend. Even in the darkness, even with the sickly strong scent of grapes all around them and the threat of the kudzu vine possibly returning, he felt safe – with Hakkai in his arms and Hakuryuu nearby, ready to show him back to the road, he felt safe and capable of being in control once again. Already the insecurities were fading in the face of his need to protect his friend.

"It's okay," he said softly, and reached down to run his palm over the soft spikes along the dragon's spine. It cooed pitifully at him.

Even with the memory of his mother looming overhead, and the memory of delicate fingers ghosting across his neck, and the memory of a sweet voice murmuring, _"You cannot have him. He will always be mine, even in death."_ – even with all those things bearing down on him, along with the exhaustion of blood loss, he felt safe and back in control.

"It's okay now."

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**Me-Nuriko:**_ I'm glad you're enjoying this story so much. Hope the rest of the chapters are up to par!_

**Puckwolf:**_ Keeping the people in character without making them stagnant is difficult; the same goes for trying to allow for character development without really taking it too far. I've found that I really enjoy Gojyo's morbid sense of humor, and I'm glad that I'm managed to do it right. Hopefully this chapter will take off a little bit of the tension – although of course you've still got to wait for Goku and Sanzo's chapter. :p!_

**Haruka Hana:**_ Gojyo and Hakkai are a wonderful couple – even though there really isn't anything in canon that says, "Yes, these two are an item," there are still so many little things that make you wonder. I'm particularly pleased with the ending here; I think they are quite sweet together. :) Glad you're liking this so much, and I think you'll enjoy what I have planned in the next chapter!_

**Sanada:**_ No worries if you haven't reviewed! I always love to hear that readers are enjoying my work, but I hardly want to beg or pressure anyone into saying anything! Hakkai didn't exactly get to kill Chin Isou in this chapter, but I'm hoping that you enjoy the resolution reguardless._

**Merf:**_ You definitely got more than just Chin Isou in this chapter, eh? It would have been too easy if just the one guy was going after them! I really wanted them to fight Kanan, but that would have been a little hard, what with her being stuck in the cell and all... so I tried the next best thing. :3_

**keistje:**_ More blood, just for you! XD! The sequels are flowing, believe you me – although I've got to do Goku's nightmare first. Hopefully the Sanzo/Goku, gen as it might be, will tide you over until I can get the smut out again. I hope you have a good fourth of July weekend!_

**Eat A Peach:**_ I will admit that even though I'm not that big of a 585 fan, I _still_ think it's probably the most canon couple in the whole series. I really enjoyed the little scene at the end, and would draw a picture of it if I had the skills. :3 I'm sorry that you've got a cold (or did when you last reviewed), and hope this little bit of yumminess makes you feel better. So glad you're enjoying this!_

**VG Terra:**_ I had thought about referring to Hakkai as "Hakkai" when he was attacking Gojyo, but it just wouldn't have fit... after all, there's such a monumental difference between Hakkai and Gonou that one simply _can't_ refer to them as the same person, even if they inhabit the same body. I'm glad that you liked that subtle change, and I'm planning on making up for every sucky fight scene in the next chapter with Homura and Sanzo. :3!_


	9. SECTION NINE

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they did. sigh...

Wow. I absolutely abhor this chapter. Possibly because I got sick and tired of staring at the same scene over and over and over again. This has to have been the hardest one for me to write – has it already been a whole month since I put up chapter 8? How sad. I can only hope that I won't take as long to write up Goku's nightmare and the ending. Two more chapters, folks; hope you're still enjoying the ride and don't hate me after you finish this chapter. Hints of 39 love for anyone who doesn't blink!

PG-13/R for Homura's stunning good looks and tendency to tease the hell out of Sanzo. There are barely enough swear words in here to warrant an R rating. Huh. That's quite strange. Spoilers for the history of the kudzu vine, but that's what you've been wanting to read, right? A hell of a lot more dialogue than in previous chapters. Maybe that's what tripped me up for so long. Kudos to anyone who spots my vague and inadvertent reference to _A Wrinkle in Time_. But don't think to hard on it – don't want anyone to hurt themselves. :P

Review comments on the bottom.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

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SECTION NINE

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"I am in no mood to play any of your games," Sanzo said harshly.

Homura's only reply was to smile, a faint upturning of the lips that complemented the mocking look in his mismatched eyes.

The blonde priest couldn't honestly say what it was about the War Prince that put his hackles up; it could have been his haughty entrance, the way he spoke, the way he held himself – it could have been anything. Homura was certainly arrogant, but it was more than just that trait that pissed Sanzo off. Whatever it was, it caused a knee-jerk reaction that Sanzo was unable to inhibit, and wasn't even sure he _wanted_ to inhibit. He wasn't one to ignore his instincts, and his instincts told him that despite all outward appearances and declared intentions, Homura was not a good guy and therefore needed to go. Not even Kougaiji and his various minions inspired this kind of gut-level response.

Perhaps that was because he and his traveling companions were more than capable of defending themselves against Kougaiji and his minions. They had yet to do the same with Homura and his fellow gods.

"Why don't you come out into the clearing, Konzen?" the god said after a lengthy silence. "Or is the harsh light of the moon too much for you right now?"

The priest managed to suppress a twitch that might have resulted in him shooting himself in the foot. What kind of mind-game was the war god up to now?

"For what reason are you here to aggravate me?" he asked instead. "If you want the Maten scripture, you already know the answer, so don't bother asking any stupid questions."

"I could have taken the scripture away from you hours ago, had that been my intention."

The other man's voice was lazy and matter-of-fact, and it set Sanzo's teeth on edge. Yet another reminder of his weaknesses, his inability to protect himself. No doubt the god was referring to the time in which the monk had been tangled in the kudzu vine, unconscious and wrapped up in a nightmare of realistic proportions.

_The kudzu vine._ Something abruptly clicked in Sanzo's mind, a piece of the puzzle that had been missing and dangling just out of reach this whole time. _We never would have run into the vine if Homura hadn't driven us off the path. Why, though, would he have gone to the effort of making sure we got close enough to be attacked if he wasn't interested in the scripture...? _He shifted slightly, adjusting his grip on the _shoureijyuu. _The vine was all part of Homura's game. But how did it fit in? What purpose did it hold?

"What's so important about this kudzu vine?" he asked aloud.

One slender brow arched, and the war god's smile altered into something that more resembled approval than mockery. "So quick to find the heart of the matter," he replied. "One of the many things I've always liked about you."

"It gets tedious to beat around the bush," Sanzo said. His temper was steadily rising at this obstruction, and he struggled to keep a tight reign on it. "Why did you lead us to the plant?"

Homura regarded him in silence for a moment, the smile fading yet still lingering around the edges of his lips, before he tilted his head back to stare up into the night sky. The stark light of the moon highlighted the column of his throat and the sharp contour of his collarbones beneath the shirt he wore.

"Why don't you come out into the moonlight?" he asked at length. "Though I must admit, the complex play of light and shadow does better to describe _you_, of all people; standing at the edge, where the light will keep the demons at bay, and the darkness will prevent you from looking too closely at your deepest – "

Something murky closed around Sanzo's lungs, making it hard to breathe. "I have no interest in your metaphors, either," he snapped, cutting the god off. "What the hell is your game this time, Homura?"

Blue-and-gold eyes shifted to stare back at him, and the smile returned in full force – there, he realized, was the reason why he did not like the god; because somehow Homura could look right through him, strip away his most basic defenses, and see the truth that Sanzo tried to hide even from himself. He saw the truth, saw the weaknesses of the soul and body, and then sought to use them as weapons.

Just like the kudzu vine.

"This is no game," the War Prince replied mildly, "not for me, and certainly not for you and your companions. If you wish to call it anything, call it a test."

"Yet another," the priest spat out bitterly. "If you want the Maten scripture so bad, why do you continue to play with us like this?"

Homura stared for a moment before crossing his arms over his broad chest, the shackles that constrained his wrists jangling quietly. The smile disappeared from his lips. "In Heaven, the gods are forbidden to kill."

The sudden change of topic made Sanzo blink. _What the hell?_

"But you, of course, understand that there are exceptions to every rule. Like the War Prince Nataku, for instance, the only god in Heaven allowed to quell Gyumaoh's uprising."

"Like you?" Sanzo asked archly. "What does this have to do with anything?"

The other man inclined his head slightly, never breaking his gaze away from priest who remained in the shadows. "However, even with these holy laws in place, the gods still killed. They did so secretly, in the dark places where light frequently did not reach. Those killed were humans, demons, and occasionally other gods – those who had gotten in the way and needed disposing of. Those who were too important to send simple assassins after; those who needed to be silenced in a manner that would not attract attention. That, my impatient monk, is what your kudzu vine was for."

Sanzo pressed his lips together, ignoring the pain that was slowly beginning to pound in his temples again. Here was yet another reason why he did not like the god – Homura apparently liked to hear himself talk. But this appeared to be a point in Sanzo's favor... it was entirely possible that the War Prince might drop a hint that would enable him to destroy the vine all that much quicker. He was well aware, though, that Homura would not let anything slip by accident; he had probably planned out everything he wanted to say days ago, long before Sanzo and his party had reached the edge of this godforsaken forest.

"I don't suppose I should be surprised that this monstrosity was created by the gods," Sanzo said dryly.

Homura smiled once again, and a faint chuckle escaped him. "Oh, it wasn't always a monstrosity, not like this. The _kyuuseishin_ was originally a tiny plant from which a short length of vine was plucked. This was then placed in the bed of the victim, who would subsequently die in their sleep, killed by their worst nightmare. The _kyuuseishin_ vine would die and wither before morning, leaving no evidence of its having been there. Now, though..." Mismatched eyes turned to wander along the edges of the clearing, gazing into the darkness of the forest, before returning to Sanzo once more. "Now, after a few hundred years of neglect and the effects of about ten years of the Minus Wave, the _kyuuseishin_ has... gotten a bit out of control. As you can see."

"Quite clearly." The monk frowned. "I still fail to see what your little history lesson has to do with anything."

"Perhaps I was wrong in believing you see the heart of the matter?" was the gently chiding response.

"Indulge me. These pop quizzes are annoying when given without prior chance to study."

A faintly disappointed sigh. "Sanzo. Can you really be so blind of the situation? There is more here than kill or be killed, destroy before being destroyed. The _kyuuseishin_ may be nothing more than a mindless enemy in your path, but can you so easily dismiss the impact of its presence? Have you already forgotten your own encounter with it? Or do you enjoy the pain of ripping open old wounds?"

_crimson-silver blade cutting a deadly arc through the air, the sharpened edge seeking to embed itself in his back_

A gunshot rang out before Sanzo realized he had raised his pistol and pulled the trigger; unsurprisingly, the bullet dissipated before coming anywhere near the god. He barely felt any satisfaction at the knowledge that, had Homura not blocked it, he would have pegged the man right through his bloody chakra.

"Hit a nerve, I see," the war god said wryly, once the echoes had faded back into silence.

It was funny, Sanzo thought briefly, just how easily this man got on his nerves. Even Gojyo, who had all the appeal of a pimple on his ass, inspired more patience than Homura. Somehow, with hardly any previous interaction, the war god knew exactly which buttons to push and when. The last thing Sanzo wanted to think about right now was that blasted nightmare and all the baggage that came along with it. Such contemplation could wait until he got out of this forest and into a decent inn. And found a fucking lighter. And he couldn't do any of the above until he found Goku. Every second this encounter took was a second that he lost in freeing Goku from the kudzu vine.

"Get the hell out of my way," he growled. "I do _not_ have time for you."

"What kind of vision did the _kyuuseishin_ invoke for you, Sanzo?" the god asked bluntly. "What bloody nightmares haunt your sleep? Are those the demons that you fear to see under the bright light of the moon?"

_ blood on his hands from when the demon had hacked into osho-sama'__s frail frame _

"_Enough_," Sanzo snapped, keeping the sights of his _shoreijyuu_ trained on Homura's chakra. "Your asinine drivel is boring me to tears. Get out of my way before I am forced to go _through_ you."

The War Prince only uncrossed his arms and rested his hands on slender hips. "What about your friends Hakkai and Gojyo?" he persisted. "What fears can the _kyuuseishin_ tap into, what ugly memories can it use to kill them in their sleep?"

_ You think you know?! You don't know anything, you filthy animal! Get away from me!_ Get away from me!

"I could care less."

"Really?" A slow, taunting smile curled Homura's lips. "What about your Goku? Do you think he's dreaming of his time spent in the prison on Mount Gogyo?"

Without thinking, Sanzo reached out for that delicate link between him and Goku, seeing if he could seize the thread and get a more precise location on the missing member of his party. But the result was negligible; although he could sense that the boy was alive and breathing (if not unhurt), the contact was still unresponsive. There was no comforting pressure in the back of his skull, silently watching and giving reassurance just by its presence. Sanzo might as well have been climbing a rope that ended at a brick ceiling.

"He's probably dreaming that he's tied to a wall in an all-you-can-eat buffet and can't get to the food," the priest replied after a moment, doing his best to keep the '_your_ Goku' comment from rattling his anger even more.

"I wonder," the god continued, a curious, almost reflective tone to his voice, "if there is something more horrifying than five centuries of loneliness and silence, something that can make a man wake screaming in blind terror. What kind of repressed memories can the _kyuuseishin_ draw from? And do you think he'll remember when he wakes?"

_Repressed memories?_ Sanzo wondered – and then realized, with the sudden clarity of a drowning man coming up for air, exactly what Homura was trying to do this time.

"...you're trying to find a way around the seal the gods put on Goku's memories," he accused. "What good will that do you?"

A sharp, pleased chuckle escaped the War Prince. "Wouldn't you like to know, Sanzo? You'd be surprised the difference that one single memory can have on a person – its presence or lack thereof. Would you be the same man you are today if any one single event had, for all extents and purposes, never happened to you?" He smiled again, and this time the priest couldn't tell if it was nasty or merely amused. "Do you think Son Goku would remain the same person he is now if his memories were returned to him?"

When he had found the boy – chained up and dirty like he had sat on a shelf without dusting for one too many years – Sanzo had given little thought to the seals that surrounded him. He knew what they _were_, of course, but his somewhat... aborted... training of all things a Sanzo should know left him ignorant of their true significance until he had discussed the skinny demon child with the _Sanbutsushin_. The _seiten taisei_, the embodiment of chaos, sealed by the gods five hundred years past for a crime no one remembered – Son Goku's silly pranks and almost childish outlook on life were a complete polar opposite to the monster unleashed when his limiter came off. But after the first time he had been forced to reseal the boy, and even to this moment, the priest believed that whatever crimes Goku had committed had been done while in that demonic form. And he didn't believe this simply because it was difficult to view Goku in the light of a 'bad guy' – but because he _knew_ it, instinctively. Whatever the boy had done in the heavens was not executed with his conscious consent.

"That would be foolish to expect," he replied with certainty, "but I have a feeling the change would be far less than you think."

"So you say," the war god said quietly. "And fifty feet from here may be your chance to find out. Let's see just how accurate your hunch is, then." A soft hiss of air, the slight blurring of features – and then the god was gone, leaving the clearing devoid of shadows save for the darkness cast by the grass and trees.

Sanzo lowered his pistol, exhaling slowly. This little goddess-ordained joyride was getting worse and worse. Keeping demonic warlords from being revived from the dead was one thing; surviving assassins, demons driven insane by the Minus Wave, renegade gods, the raging stupidity of his companions, and Mother Nature's Revenge was another altogether. Someone was having far too much fun up in the heavens, and the blonde priest was more than ready to put a bullet between her (or his, or whatever) eyes.

But... what if Homura's plan went through, and Goku was finally able to reach his memories again? How could that affect the efficiency of their team? He knew that if Koumyou Sanzo had never died – or if the memory had been taken from him – he would not be who he was today. He would still hate people, still have a strong dislike for Gojyo, still be blunt and distant and uncaring for the opinion of others. But perhaps he would not hate physical contact so much, perhaps he wouldn't find so much solace in solitude. There were a hundred million little things that might seem like small changes, but amounted to so much when the total was tallied. His life would have been different if he hadn't become a Sanzo at thirteen. The person Goku was, he knew, would also risk becoming vastly changed if his memories of the past were returned to him.

As much as Gojyo and the stupid little monkey annoyed him, their presence had become an integral part of his life – none of them could survive singly what they could as a group. Their reactions were as second-nature to him as to them; Sanzo knew which way Hakkai would step when attacked by a demon, where Gojyo would fling the chain of his _shakujou_, where not to shoot when Goku threw himself into the fray. Give him a hypothetical ambush and he could plot out exactly how each of his companions would react, and how he would fit his own style of fighting around them. None of them even thought about it any more, not even Hakkai. It had become instinct.

If even one of them were to step out now, the bond they had developed would fall to pieces. No matter how badly Sanzo might want to leave one or all of them behind, he knew it could not be done. Especially if it was Goku – the only one who had managed to slip past his defenses and find a home in the back of his mind.

Somewhere deep down, he desperately hoped that the boy's memories would stay right where they were: in the darkness, never to be revealed by the light of remembrance. Change was inevitable, but that was one change he never wanted to see happen.

_ Why don't you come out into the clearing, Konzen? Or is the harsh light of the moon too much for you right now? _

_Not for me_, he thought. _For Goku, perhaps, but not for me._

"I fucking hate you," he said aloud, uncaring if the god could hear him or not, and stepped out of the shadows to make his way across the clearing.

---

It sounded like rain.

Like rain on the treetops, like wind through the branches – a constant, monotonous, sibilant hissing that assaulted his hearing and vibrated in his lungs, his very bones. Hundreds of thousands of millions of huge, spade-shaped leaves that chafed together in some kind of eerie song that only nature itself knew the music to – the forest around him quivered as though in anticipation of something more to come.

The sound was slowly driving him insane.

Sanzo could barely see the plant for what it was, the canopy overhead woven so tightly that only the tiniest spots of light shown through – but that hardly mattered, considering the racket it was making. He had heard it the instant he crossed the clearing Homura had briefly dominated, the reverberation growing and growing until finally there was no other sound but the kudzu vine vocalizing its hunger. If the hissing had been that of a beating heart instead, he knew his own pulse would be keeping time with it.

There was little enough light to see by, and it was all Sanzo could do not to trip or catch the hem of his robes on a root and fall flat on his face. But thankfully the forest floor quickly grew barren, littered with nothing but the deep pile of years of leaf litter. Everything under the canopy of the kudzu vine had been smothered; likely nothing had been able to grow there for decades. Whatever sound he made while kicking aside the withered foliage was lost amongst that of the trembling branches suspended above him.

The scent that surrounded him, just like the sound, was too powerful, overwhelming; the smell of grapes was so sickly sweet and cloying that the act of breathing itself made his stomach threaten to rebel against the laws of gravity. The blossoms were too dark in color for him to see them against the paler green of the leaves, but the priest knew they were there nonetheless – and with them, the flat suckers that the vine used to assault its victims. But never once was he attacked as he made his way closer and closer to the source of the hunger that permeated the forest, and it wasn't until he found Goku that he realized why.

The main stalk of the kudzu vine was, to put it mildly, enormous. Woody branches as thick around as his waist curled and twisted and wove around each other, dozens of them that erupted from the earth to rise, entangled, into the canopy. Overhead, the limbs were entwined so tightly that even the relative brightness of the moon had difficulty breaking through, instead tingeing the cavern-like clearing with green shadows. These vines were so aged that time itself had frozen their movements, encased them in a brittle form that only allowed existence, and nothing more. Eventually younger, more mobile vines split away from the main branches, and these he could see rippling in the distant edges of darkness, either unable to reach or more wary of approaching him after the priest had escaped their clutches twice. There were no creepers close enough to reach him from the root of the _kyuuseishin_.

And there, curled up at the base of the main kudzu – vine? tree? – was the very person Sanzo was looking for. Clothing smudged and stained, already messy hair further worsened by twigs and leaf-litter, the gaudy orange of the cape he loved so much almost glowing in the darkness – Goku looked like he had fallen asleep by accident, as though he had grown tired of sitting against the trunk, tired of waiting, and had simply slumped over onto his side. His _nyoi-bou_, which normally vanished if he fell unconscious, rested innocuously only inches from his fingertips, useless while not in the grip of its wielder.

Short lengths of vine had pushed their way up through the forest floor in order to twine themselves around the young demon's body, dozens of them wrapped around his wrists and throat and ankles, curling around his waist and legs. They looked more like roots, really, for there were no leaves or flowers, just the dark green of the creepers and the sucker-like appendages that graced their tips. The priest could only see where one was attached, to the length of throat visible beneath the high collar of the shirt Goku wore. It was too dark beneath the canopy to see if any more were trying to drain away his _chi_, but Sanzo was more than certain there were.

Sanzo came to a stop only a few feet away from the boy he had practically raised by himself, just out of reach in case any of the creepers decided to detach themselves and attack him as well. From here, he could see the tension in the small body, despite how deceptively relaxed he looked sprawled out on his side. Eyes fluttered under dark-lashed lids, thick brows were drawn together in a faint frown, a muscle jumped in his cheek as he clenched his jaw – Goku looked angry, more like he was pissed at an enemy than caught in a nightmare.

Then again, the boy almost always reacted with anger in the face of something that should have frightened him. Fear was a weakness, an emotion that could freeze the body instead of sending it into motion. Perhaps, like Sanzo, he had grown sick of being frightened, of being weak, and found that anger allowed responsiveness, using it as a crutch to briefly escape his own faults.

But Sanzo didn't think so. He had never met any one with the level of self-confidence this simple-minded boy displayed – not even Gojyo, whose bravado was a thin disguise for his fear and self-loathing. Goku seemed to genuinely believe in his own strength, even in the face of tremendous defeat, and that same belief extended to the three he traveled with. Sanzo had never once seen the younger man show doubt in himself, or doubt in others (which had caused considerable trouble, on more than one occasion).

On the one hand, such lack of fear could be attributed to stupidity, but... Goku wasn't as stupid as he acted. He simply... saw things differently than other people did – not logically, but emotionally. It was difficult to follow his train of thought when he tried to explain himself, and when he _was_ able to find words for what he meant, he only came across as dim-witted or easily distracted. But the priest would not have been able to stand Goku's presence for so many years if he really _was_ that retarded; if it wasn't for the moments of deep insight he occasionally displayed, Sanzo would have left the boy at a foster family a long, long time ago.

However, lack of fear in the face of danger did not necessarily mean that Goku didn't fear anything. Sanzo remembered all too well the nightmares that would wrest the boy out of sleep and into the priest's room, looking for any physical comfort he could possibly get to ground himself in reality. There was a bone-deep fear hidden somewhere in the back of Goku's mind, something that was easily overlooked and ignored in favor for more pleasant thoughts (like food). Sanzo once believed the nightmares had to do with the centuries imprisoned at the peak of Mount Gogyo, and that the fears had faded with time, but... perhaps he had been wrong.

_/ ...just a dream... just a dream... /  
_

Was there something more frightening than five hundred years of isolation, as Homura had suggested? Something so terrifying, so damaging to a child's mind that the gods were merciful enough to take those memories away? If Goku hadn't been dreaming of his imprisonment, back when he woke screaming from his nightmares, what _had_ he been dreaming of?

And was he dreaming of it now?

Withered and long-dead leaves rustled beneath stained robes as Sanzo knelt at the unconscious boy's side, brushing aside the discarded weapon. There were deep secrets here, he knew – dark and tangled creatures that probably weren't meant to survive the centuries that had passed. But because Goku had been witness to those secrets, and had been sealed away for a crime no one remembered, they had managed to live on in his mind, somewhere that Goku couldn't reach even if he wanted to. But the subconscious had a frightening way of pushing those memories to the surface at the most inopportune moments. Sanzo should know – he had to relive the painful events that had happened to him over ten years ago every time the sky clouded up and let loose the rain.

Or when he dreamed.

It was all too easy to dredge up the anger that he felt towards this plant, this construct of the gods, and the way it managed to stick its filthy creepers into dusty corners of the mind that were better left untouched. What other nightmares had it used to feed on innocent traveler's _chi_? How many people had been forced to relive the death of a loved one, a close shave with death, a rape, a murder? Why had the gods, who were supposed to _merciful_, created such a monstrosity?

Sanzo had known exactly what dream of Gojyo's he had stepped into once he heard the screaming issuing from behind the faded and ill-painted door. And, in thinking on it, he could predict exactly what dream Hakkai was caught in – although the particulars were unknown to him, the priest knew Gojyo would have to fight through the memories of Hyakuganmaoh's castle if he expected to release his old friend from the kudzu vine's grasp. If not for Homura's unexpected appearance, he would have guessed that Goku's dream would involve the cold, dry peak of Mount Gogyo, and the same cavern he had found the boy in so many years ago. He would have thought releasing Goku from that dream would be a piece of cake. But now he wasn't so sure. The war god's words could have been a ploy to undermine his confidence, but something in them... rang true. A sense of truthfulness, that Homura knew something Sanzo did not. And he hated that.

_ Do you think Son Goku would remain the same person he is now if his memories were returned to him? _

_I don't know_, the blonde priest thought honestly. _He probably wouldn't be. But regardless of what those memories are, regardless of what crimes he might have committed in Heaven, whether he deserved the punishment or not, he'll still be the same idiot monkey-boy who has terrorized me for over four years. I will not allow my opinion of him to be swayed by what I may or may not see in these dreams. _

_Because... life would be awfully quiet without him around. _

Sanzo checked his pistol one last time, ejecting the spent cartridge he had futilely used on Homura and refilling the empty chamber. He didn't want to run out of bullets once he pulled Goku out of his dream.

He ignored the hostile rattling of the _kyuuseishin_ vine, ignored the heavy feeling of dread that threatened to push aside his anger – and laid a hand on the sleeping boy's cheek, curling his fingers through the thick hair, and let himself be blinded by the white brilliance of Goku's nightmare.

---

**keistje:**_ Some 39 love just for you. Told you I'd get around to it... eventually. –sweatdrop- Now I just have to concentrate on finishing this so I can get you your smut. :3_

**Me-Nuriko:**_ I'm glad that you've enjoyed the Gojyo/Hakkai scenes so much – though they aren't my favorite pairing, I do think it's probably the most canon one of them all. I wasn't sure whether or not I'd capture their relationship right, and your assurance that I have is very pleasing. :) The bit with Kanan was probably my favorite part, except for perhaps the cuddling at the end (I can't choose! I love them both so much! XD). Hope the Sanzo/Goku works out for you just as well!_

**Koinu-Chan:**_ Sorry I took so long to update, but I hope this meets your approval. "The world is made of... LOVE and PEACE!" :3_

**Haruka Hana:**_ Hope I didn't disappoint you with the lack of physical fighting between Sanzo and Homura. But that would have been no fun – he'll have enough to do in Goku's nightmare, why make things worse for him? Other than the fact that we enjoy it? ;) I'm writing, I'm writing!_

**Blades of Ice:**_ Everyone seems so pleased with my action scene – that makes me so happy! There's nothing more pleasing to me than knowing I'm drawing my readers in and really letting them _experience_ the story. This chapter is more dialogue than action, but I hope it's up to your standards. Thanks so much for your reviews!_

**Merf:**_ Kanan's part in the chapter wasn't originally there, but I ended up making a few changes in my head, and I think that was probably the best change I could have made. So glad you like it! :)!_

**Eclipse45:**_ Breathe! Breathe! :)! There's so many chapters uploaded onto ff .net that it's no surprise that mine gets lost amongst the bunch – but I'm very glad you found it! There's nothing better than finding a story that had you coming back and checking your favorites page every day in case there's an update, right? But I promise that I won't do _too_ many bad things to our Goku. Just... you know, a few. :3_

**stitcher2ficcer:**_ Wow! Your reviews give me the warm and fuzzies every time I look at them! Thank you so much for all of them – they make me blush just thinking about them! I really don't know what to say in response to any of them, besides the obvious THANK YOU!!! for leaving your opinions on the story, and for recommending this to others. This whole story is pretty saturated with angst, isn't it? I'm surprised I haven't scared anyone away from it yet! I can only hope that these last three chapters will meet with your approval as well. :3 Thanks again, sooo much, for your reviews! -heart!-_


	10. SECTION TEN

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they did. sigh...

OMG I LOVE THIS CHAPTER. And I'm going to love the next one, too; this dream started to take waaaay too long to type out, so I'm afraid you've got two more chapters left to the end of the story. :3 Sorry to keep dragging things out on you.

R for blood, guts, and gore. This chapter is ridiculously bloody, so please don't blame me if you have a tender stomach and can't take the heat. There are a number of things that will need explaining if you don't get them, but I've attached footnotes, so all will be well. The only spoilers here are the ones I'm making up.

Review comments on the bottom.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

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SECTION TEN

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The transition from darkness to light was so sudden that it took an abnormally long amount of time for Sanzo to adjust to the change. It was so bright, in fact, that his eyes began to water, and he was forced to shift the _shoreijyuu_ to his left hand in order to dig a knuckle into one offending eye. Absolute silence greeted his ears as he struggled to regain his vision; this switch, too, was so abrupt that he felt as though he might have gone blind _and_ deaf in the same instant.

But when he was finally able to see again, without all that unnecessary squinting, all he saw was white. A pure, pristine, perfect whiteness that stretched on before him in a nearly unbroken hallway. There were a few doors, here and there, that lined the walls, but otherwise it was difficult to tell where the walls met the ceiling and floor – only a thin line of shadow betrayed where the connection occurred. There were no decorations, no rugs or paintings or statues or even any smudges of dirt where feet might have once tread. He could not tell where the light was coming from; it almost seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.

_What the hell is this?_ the priest could not help but wonder. After Homura's lengthy discussion about the history of the kudzu vine, and all his blather about internal demons and bloody memories, Sanzo had expected something a bit more... animated than this. A battle, maybe, or the _seiten taisei_ in all its insane glory. _Something_ more than an empty hallway, so silent he could practically hear his own heartbeat. The scenery was just too... surreal... to be any form of nightmare.

And yet...

_/ ...no... no, no, god, no... /  
_

That tiny, irritating voice that seemed to echo between his very ears had returned; the comforting connection he had shared with Goku for the past few years was back to its full strength, a vivid and completely undecipherable wash of pain, horror, and fear flooding the recesses of his thoughts. Adrenaline spiked in response, and Sanzo was forced to take a calming breath and remind himself that he couldn't react without thinking in this place. Such intuitive actions had served him well in dealing with Goku before, but he couldn't be so sure that acting on gut instinct would be wise while caught inside a _dream_.

_Where are you?_ he wondered, wrapping ghostly fingers around the thread that bound him to the boy and tugging lightly, letting his presence and thoughts be known. There was no active response – there was no sign that Goku realized he was there, probably too caught up in the dizzying spiral of fear that seemed to have ensnared his mind. It was intoxicating, and Sanzo was hard-pressed not to let himself get sucked in as well as he tried to determine the boy's location.

He had never before sensed this level of terror from Goku before, or even from any other person he had encountered. So completely encompassing; there was nothing outside the panic, the wildly racing thoughts that bumped into each other at random but created no coherent meanings.

_blind fear, the pain of skin stretched too tight over aching muscles _

_the hollow feeling of a sucker-punch to the gut that came from a sense of deep self-loathing _

_so sickened that he continues to dry-heave even though it's obvious there is nothing left to bring up _

_/ ...no no no no no nonoNONONO_NO_! /  
_

Sanzo forced himself away from the connection, wrenching his mind from the maddening whirl of emotions, practically gasping from the intensity of it. Just attempting to determine Goku's general location had brought him too close to that frantic state of panic; the priest's heart was thundering in his chest as though it were _he_ who was so deathly afraid of – what? What in the world could possibly frighten Goku so much that Sanzo didn't stand a chance of consoling him from such a distance?

He closed his eyes and breathed deep, counting the time between inhaling and exhaling, willing his heartbeat to slow, walling himself away from the majority of Goku's emotions. It only took him a moment to regain control again, so that Goku's panic was just a faint sensation at the edge of his mind, but every second that passed seemed to intensify the silence that surrounded him, until the air itself seemed to throb in a soundless rhythm against his eardrums. It was beginning to greatly unnerve him.

Sanzo reopened his eyes, studying the passage before him in deeper detail. It appeared that the hall came to an end maybe thirty feet down, to a blank wall that bore no adornment. None of the doors were open, and nothing separated the importance of one doorway from another. With a slight turn, he could see that the hallway behind him had a similar dead-end, albeit a much closer one and with less doors in-between. He turned about again, facing back the way he had been when opening his eyes for the first time in this eerie nightmare. All his senses pointed him in _this_ direction – that he needed to go forward, and not backward.

His sandals did not make much noise when walking, but in this peculiar silence every scrape of bamboo and whisper of silk seemed to echo painfully in his ears. His normal quiet grace sounded loud and clumsy, and he cursed himself for even thinking of holding his breath in order to make less noise. His own movements would not be muffled, but neither would the movements of any enemy who sought to sneak up on him. With this pin-drop stillness he would be able to hear an attack from fifty feet away – more than enough time to bring his gun into play.

Ten feet down the hallway he was violently assaulted with the scent of death, as surely as though he had hit a wall of caked and drying blood. Sanzo could not help but grimace at the foul taste it left in the back of his throat, and lifted his free hand to cover his nose with the sleeve of his robe. Something, or someone, had died very recently in this corridor, or behind one of these doors... perhaps more than one someone, because the odor of blood was so strong that it had to have come from more than one person. His stomach clenched with nausea and the memory of a nightmare not so far gone from him, and Sanzo was unpleasantly reminded of the headache and fatigue that lurked at the edges of his consciousness. But he forced back the urge to pause and give his stomach a moment to settle; he didn't have the time to waste on his own frailties right now.

The priest didn't know how he knew that time was quickly running out. He just _did_.

Twenty feet down he could see that the hallway didn't really dead-end, but rather intersected another hall at right angles. Sanzo could see the edges of a doorway to both the left and the right of the dead-end, but kept his gaze focused to the right-hand side – that was where his senses were telling him he needed to go. Anything that was prowling to the left would have made noise, and the only thing he could hear was the scuffing of his sandals and his own uneven breathing as he fought off the urge to gag. He would give it a cursory glance once he reached the junction, but would otherwise pay that end of the hall no mind.

Twenty-five feet down he could see the beginnings of why the air stunk so heavily of blood.

Sanzo lowered the sleeve that covered his mouth and nose when he entered the new corridor, not even bothering to hide his astonishment at the slaughter laid out before him. Dozens of men in black-and-silver uniforms were sprawled in boneless death across the once-pristine tiles, blood splattered on the walls and on their skin and pooling across the floor. There was no way to count how many lay dead here; some were slumped against the wall as though thrown there, or collapsed across a comrade-in-arms as though perhaps they had tripped in battle. Just at a glance, there had to have been more than forty. _Far_ more than forty – perhaps even double that.

He took a breath through his nose, grimaced, and chose to breathe through his mouth instead. These men had been soldiers, no doubt about that – not just because of the identical uniforms they wore, but because of the weapons scattered about the carnage and clutched in stiffened fingers. Guns, mostly, with a cross-bow here and there; all of them long-range weapons that had apparently done these warriors little good.

Sanzo stepped up to the edge of the defeated crowd, meticulously avoiding the spilt blood, and stared down at the face of one of the soldiers. This one might have been the first to fall – even though his eyes were glassy in death, his face still held the faint remains of an expression of surprise, a man who had not expected to see death visit him so soon; the cross-bow in his hand was still loaded. The blood pooled under and around him had not yet dried. The wound that had caused his death was obviously perpetrated by a sharp weapon, probably a sword – out of place among all the guns that littered the massacre.

He stepped gingerly over the fallen corpses, attempting to avoid getting any more blood on his robes than necessary, but gave up the vain effort as a lost cause after only ten more feet. With further examination, he could see that all these men had likely died by the same hand, because the strokes were methodical, precise, and aimed to kill instantly. It was an incredibly large number for one man to kill alone, unless there was a group of people who were trained in the same technique. But something told him it was only one man, and he had not flown through this veritable army with the intent of slaughter – the injuries on the soldiers would have been more designed to cause pain, less designed to kill. No, such fastidious weaponry indicated a person who had a purpose, a strong reason to kill... or defend.

Sanzo paused and looked back behind him, down in the direction he had not bothered to look before. Beyond the intersection he had come from the hallway returned to its pristine, snow-white condition; no soldiers lay dead down there. None of the dead men were facing in that direction – they were all facing in the direction Sanzo was headed, as though they were planning to go to the same place and had been... stalled. Had this mysterious swordsman been defending, then, instead of attacking?

He looked back down at the warriors at his feet, at the ones who had their faces turned up so he could see their expressions of pain, surprise, and defeat.

All of them bore chakras on their foreheads.

The priest frowned, shifting his grip on the pistol in his hand. In remembrance, these uniforms were frighteningly familiar to the attire of the five gods who had attempted to crush his traveling party with a well-placed boulder... arrogant soldiers who had thought they could do what Homura's other lackeys could not. Were these, then, the soldiers of Heaven? Were these the walls of the Heavenly Courts?

Sanzo didn't know what to think of that idea. Goku _had_ been imprisoned by the gods for some crime committed against them... but had he actually once resided in Heaven itself? It seemed a ludicrous thought – _Goku_ in _Heaven_? – but somehow... right.

Even so, he was only drawing conclusions that might not be correct from the circumstances that surrounded him. The priest could not assume they were right – he could only tuck them away for acknowledgement later. For now, he would have to follow the whimpering of pain and fear in the back of his mind and decide what was true and not later. He sighed heavily through his nose and continued picking his way across the corpses.

Another junction interrupted his path fifty feet of slaughter later, and abruptly the mass of bodies came to an end... except for a trail of blood that took the left-hand turn and disappeared around the corner. Sanzo paused again before he reached the cross-path, cocking the _shoreijyuu_ just in case, and then followed.

This passage looked no different from the rest: white ceiling, floor, and walls, with the occasional doorway thrown in to break up the monotony. The repetition in architecture was, frankly, beginning to wear on his nerves (which were already badly frayed just from the nausea and fatigue alone), not to mention straining his eyes. Life in Heaven must have been ridiculously tedious if they couldn't even throw in a splash of color now and then, he figured.

But halfway down this corridor, at the end of the trail of smeared bloody footsteps, was a man sitting slumped against the jam of an open doorway. Once-white clothing (_what is it with all the _white Sanzo thought in irritation) had been liberally soaked in blood, both from the soldiers in the passage behind them and from his own injuries. Multiple cross-bow bolts were still embedded in his flesh; two or three more littering the ground beside him, as though the warrior had given up removing them partway through. His dress was far more ornate than the men he had killed – silver and black guards on his wrists and shins, a decorative circlet holding back the bangs of blood-stained snow-white hair – as was the sword which had murdered so many, hilt resting in a lax hand. (1)

This man was obviously different from the other gods, even discounting the alabaster skin and hair. Sanzo could not see his face, but he wasn't so sure that this warrior _was_ a god – something about him gave off a completely different vibe from the other men (god or demon or otherwise) he had encountered. Regardless, he was a skilled warrior, for it appeared that he had stopped the entire force that had been pursing – him? someone he was protecting? – without any backup. He could see that this was an honorable death for the man at his feet, and could not help but wonder if he had any connection with Goku.

Sanzo had a strong feeling he did.

But he was dead, his head bowed and chin nearly resting on the silver breastplate he wore, and Sanzo didn't have the time to wonder or ever take a look at the features of the warrior. The doorway only led to another corridor, shorter and narrower than all the others the priest had been following. Yet another open door lay at its end, and the entrance fairly screamed for Sanzo's attention. That was the direction where this white solider had been heading... the direction that Goku lay in.

He was almost willing to consider saying a prayer for this man later, but Sanzo had a feeling that he would not be interested in having prayers offered up to the very gods he had murdered. So he turned his back on the fallen warrior and stepped through the open doorway, following the path the other man was no longer able to walk.

The smell of blood receded the further he got from the butchered army, but did not fade entirely; most of the bottom edge of his robes had been soaked through with blood, cold and sappy on the fabric of his socks, and the scent clung to him like a cloud of disease. His stomach still roiled in protest, inconsolable despite the fact that he no longer had to pick his way across a floor of corpses less than an hour dead. It was difficult to ignore his fatigue and the stress headache that was now creeping down into his spine with nothing but the blinding white walls of the endless corridors to attract his attention. Sanzo followed open doorway after open doorway, ignoring the lure of intersections and the one ornate entrance that had caught his attention – the depiction of a man riding a nine-headed lion with a vase in one hand and a sword in the other. He had snorted at that, but continued onward without pause. It only made sense that one of the rulers of Hell make an appearance in such a grisly nightmare. (2)

When the sickly-sweet odor of death grew stronger again, the blonde priest was more ready for the appearance of black-clad soldiers slumped in death. The change in battle tactics was obvious, though; the wounds of the dead were still made by swords, but more ragged, sloppily made, and far fewer bodies littered the ground. It appeared as though they had been actively chasing something, as though those soldiers in the front had been brought down and the soldiers behind had simply kept running onward, ignoring the fate of their fallen comrades. What blood had been spilled was smeared with the tread of boots.

Sanzo followed the trail of gore with his eyes, how it made its way down the corridor before making a right turn at another intersection. Here the killers of the soldiers had been running, pausing occasionally to defend when their enemies drew too close, and then disengaging to flee further. Two large groups of military men had been dispatched in order to take down the white solider and whoever else he was affiliated with – and if Sanzo hadn't entirely lost his sense of direction in this maze of white halls, the two groups had probably been executing a pincher maneuver, to pin the renegades between their forces and then push them into a dead end. The first had failed, obviously, but within these twisted walls there had to be dozens of blind alleys that a fleeing band of people might be too panicked to avoid.

And the sense of Goku's presence was getting very close.

The priest followed the direction the dead soldiers had been heading, turning right once he reached the intersection. This hallway ended at a large entrance, though with the double-doors flung open like they were he was unable to discern any importance from decoration. Here was the impasse he had predicted; at the foot of the doorway numerous uniformed men lay draped over one another, forming a low wall of carcasses that impeded entry or exit. This room probably had no other exit, and so the doorway had been defended as long as possible before the enemies of these soldiers had been overwhelmed. The opening was too wide for one man to hold alone, so it made sense that at least two people had been fighting back against the tide of marital force. Their efforts had been in vain, apparently, for Sanzo could see the blood that stained the walls of the room even from where he stood.

Sanzo could sense that the boy he was searching for was inside that very room.

Six quick steps brought him to the heap of soldiers that barred the entrance of the large room, and from there he could see the large statue that dominated the far side of the room. A representation of the Buddha sat on a low pedestal, right hand raised in _abhayamudra(3)_, polished bronze now splattered with the blood of the gods – the room had probably been used for mediation. One such god lay before the statue, hands reaching out toward the enlightened being as though begging for mercy on his immortal life. The remains of his intestines were arranged grotesquely around his prone form.

The priest averted his eyes immediately, clapping his free hand over his mouth in order to stall the violent heave of his stomach. It wasn't that he hadn't seen large-scale displays of death before; on the contrary, he was used to seeing and causing such carnage himself. But there weren't simply dead men in that room – but dead, eviscerated, _torn-to-pieces_ men. Dark, viscous blood still trailed down the walls, puddled on the tiles, dripped from the very ceiling. Some of the damage wasn't so violent – a missing arm, a decapitated head with no body to immediately match it with – but there were at least one or two smears that could no longer be considered bodies anymore. There was hardly any place he could go without stepping in someone's guts, and even fewer places where he would not step in blood. He breathed in through his nose without thinking, and the stench of death forced an involuntary gag.

It was embarrassing that he had to battle dry heaves when he had witnessed similar butchery before, but his tired body didn't really give a damn about his pride at the moment.

Sanzo closed his eyes, forcing the churning nausea to subside by sheer will alone. He didn't need to be a genius in order to figure out what – or who – had gone on this twisted killing spree. There was only one creature he knew of that was capable of slaughtering so many in such a brutal fashion, and probably laughed maniacally the whole time he was at it.

_Seiten taisei_ Son Goku.

He reopened his eyes, fixing them first on the bloody pile of corpses at his feet, losing himself in dry details to help suppress his urge to retch. As suspected, they had all died from some sort of sharp object, same as the soldiers killed by the white warrior and in the hall behind him. Cross-bows and their ammunition were scattered on the ground and seized in stiff fingers, some of the weapons not even discharged.

Just inside the doorway were two men riddled with bolts, each with a sword clutched in hand. One of them wore a uniform no different from the other soldiers – at least from the back, for he lay sprawled face-down on the tile – short black hair and half the face visible smeared with blood. The other appeared to be wearing a white lab-coat, which was strange enough amongst all the soldiers, one now more red than white. He had fallen somewhat on his side, one arm tucked to his chest and the other out flung – bloody brown hair stuck to a pale cheek, obscuring the features and the cracked set of glasses that peeked out from the messy bangs. It was obvious from their wounds that they had not died in the same manner as the rest of the soldiers in the room.(4)

Sanzo lifted his gaze once his stomach stopped threatening to rebel, taking in the rest of the details of the meditation chamber that he had missed before. On the far side of the room, pressed into the only corner that wasn't drenched with blood, sat a tiny figure curled in a fetal position, knees pulled to a narrow chest and arms wrapped around them – so still and silent that in the first few seconds Sanzo wasn't even sure he was breathing. But then a quick, hitched sob made its way across the silence of the death trap, and the priest found himself stepping over the low wall of corpses and making his way across the room without consciously deciding to move. The sound of his sandals slapping in the blood was loud, but he was halfway across the room before it occurred to him that Goku had not reacted to his presence. The sense of him through the connection they shared was numb with shock.

"Goku," he said – and winced, for even though the word was said softly, it seemed to ricochet in the deathly quiet, bouncing against the blood-stained walls and slamming back into his ear-drums at twice the volume he had meant it to be. Even this failed to stir the skinny figure that seemed to be trying to curl in on itself and disappear. He couldn't really blame that reaction – Goku was drenched with blood from fingertip to elbow, bright red splattered liberally over the black tank and jeans (that were familiar garb to the priest – hadn't that been the very attire Goku had been wearing when Sanzo freed him from the mountain?) and the iron cuffs that circled his wrists and ankles. The long, messy hair was spiky with blood as well, his face pressed into his arms and hidden from view.

There was a white-clad body(5) slumped to the ground not far from Goku, but the priest paid it no mind, his eyes focused on the dreamer of this nasty nightmare. Had this truly been what the heretic had gone through – a mad race against time and death, only to end up having everyone die but himself? Why had he been among the hunted? Who were the other three who had been with him? When the boy lost control and shifted into his demonic form, what had triggered the change? And who had replaced the coronet that supposedly could only be made by the gods?

Sanzo knelt slowly, no longer caring about the blood that would soak into his robes. "Goku," he repeated – softer this time, so it would not echo – and reached out to rest his right hand on the boy's shoulder.

The flesh was beneath his fingertips for less than a second before the muscles tensed and jerked away. Goku unfolded like a shot from a gun, bare feet and hands scrabbling against the tile to throw himself away from the priest. The back of his head hit the wall with an audible _crack_ of metal against tile, but he made no sound of pain or fear. He just gasped for breath, sucking in short sobs of air, golden eyes wide and hugely dilated, fixated on Sanzo's face with the expression of a person expecting a very painful death. He was... absolutely terrified. Of Sanzo.

The jabbering in his mind rose again, the connection even stronger now that they were less than three feet apart, all the fear and pain flooding back over the line before Sanzo had a chance to strangle the link. Of all the things he had seen in this lurid dream, all the people dead and eviscerated, he was disgusted most by Goku's fear. Not disgusted _at_ Goku, but rather that something so terrible had happened that the cocky self-sure attitude that he had become so accustomed to had fled in the face of all this blood. Disgusted at whoever had decided to order a veritable army after three ill-armed men and a _boy_. Quasi-demonic in nature Goku was, but he was still just a child, even more so in this memory than he was in the present. In that instant Sanzo wished that he had been able to kill at least one of those soldiers himself – there was nothing more sickening to him than a mercenary who followed orders without question, without wondering how a normally care-free child like Goku could be dangerous enough to send an army after (even if he _was_ that dangerous when cornered – as these poor fools had discovered).

_No wonder I lost faith in the gods so many years ago. _

"Goku," he repeated, just as softly, pulling back his hand and resting it on his knee. He rested the chamber of his other gun on his thigh as well, deliberately keeping his movements slow in order to avoid startling the boy any further. "Goku, there is no more reason to be frightened. There isn't anyone here who's going to hurt you." _And I'll murder anyone who tries,_ he could not help but add silently.

There was no sign of recognition in those eyes, no spark of understanding; panic was still coursing madly through the connection, pulsing in time with Goku's rapid bird-like heartbeat. The priest would not be able to calm him while he was like this – as long as the boy was lost in this (not completely) irrational fear, then there was no way that Sanzo would be able to convince him that this was nothing more than a nightmare that could be woken up from. So he allowed his stranglehold on the link to loosen, to take control of the connection and _touch_ the awareness on the other end. The only thing he could think to do was try and calm the child, like he might a wild beast caught in a trap – wrapping up each wild tendril of fear with calm and quiet and folding it back in on itself. He wasn't aware of how much time passed before he realized that Goku was actually _looking_ at him, without the unfocused glint of fear in his eyes. He was still breathing unevenly, but no longer with the frantic hitching sobs of before.

Nails scrapped against the floor as small hands curled into fists, and the boy dropped his eyes to the blood on his clothing.

"I didn't mean to do it," he whispered in a tiny, weak voice.

"I know," Sanzo replied softly. He didn't know what had happened – besides what he had discerned from the evidence he was presented – but it was difficult to believe that any of this had been done by Goku on purpose. Whoever was behind this was the true manipulator; not even this priest could blame a badly frightened child for anything he had done to defend himself. Not in the middle of this massacre.

"Goku," he said again, and was pleased that the boy was finally reacting to him when golden eyes lifted to stare at him beneath long lashes. "You have to listen to me closely. You – "

Something shifted, a clink of metal against tile, impossibly loud in the silence despite its quite nature, and Sanzo whirled, bringing his gun up to bear on the unknown intruder.

Already half-way across the room, although no other sound had been made to indicate his presence, stood the War Prince Homura, leaning on his sword – and if the frown on his face was any indication of his temperament, he was not pleased.

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_A/N:_

_1 For those of you who didn't get it or weren't sure, this is Gojun, the past incarnation of our cute and cuddly Hakuryuu._

_2 This is _Tai Yi_, one of the most important gods in Taoism and Buddhism; he is one of the highest rulers in the 10-stage Taoist Hell, and all humans must pass before him to be sentenced after death._

_3 The _abhayamudra_ position of traditional Buddhist statues has the right hand raised palm up – a gesture meant to dispel fear. These statues are used to symbolize protection and peace in one's home and garden._

_4 Yeah, these two are Kenren and Tenpou – I know that Kenren has red hair in the anime, but in the manga he has black hair. I mean, if red hair and eyes are meant to indicate a taboo child, why would a god have red hair and eyes? o.0? So, in this story, he had black hair. Get over it._

_5 Yes, this is Konzen. Yes, I know he's sometimes depicted in purple clothing instead, but I like the contrast of red on white. More visually appealing. :3 Yes, he will be explained in the next chapter. Woo-hoo!_

**Blades of Ice:** _I'm so glad my Homura at least appears structurally correct. –sweatdrop- I'll have more to work on this next chapter. Hope you're enjoying the Goku torture, too. Mwahahahaha!_

**keistje:**_ OMG it's 2 in the morning and I really need sleep. Hope you enjoy everything at the end that I didn't let you read before I posted it. Woo!_

**Koinu****-Chan:**_ Bwaha! I gave you a quick update, but I'm afraid this might not tell you everything that happens. You'll just have to read the next chapter and find out! :3_

**Eat A Peach:**_ No worries on missing the chapter 8 update, I miss these things all the time. But I'm glad that you like my version of Isou (as small a part as he had). And it took me a few minutes to get back into writing after I put down the 'buddha-humper' comment. I was laughing insanely and attracting the attention of my parents. It was funny as hell. :3 Although I didn't include so much of Sanzo's 'I hate everyone' in this chapter, I kinda figured all the detective work he'd be doing would push a lot of that macho "I don't care" stuff out of the way. I hope I managed to pull it off right, and that the Sanzo-internal-torture is enough. -heart-!_

**Me-Nuriko: **_Thank you so much for the compliments! -heart-! I guess I was just staring at that chapter for so long that I started to hate every word it – that happens when writer's block sets in too deep, I guess. Didn't have that problem with THIS chapter!_

**bleedformeee:**_ I love you too! –squeal!- Oooh, and naughty voyeurism pictures of Sanzo/Goku! –drools- I hope you're not too tired when you get around to reading this (omg its 205 in the morning! –cries-), and I hope you enjoy it lots. :3_


	11. SECTION ELEVEN

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they did. sigh...

Yeah, I know I said I would love this chapter, and I do, but it was so hard to write. ;; I'm sorry I took so long to write this, but things kept... popping up. -glances at Chocolate and shoves it behind her back where no one will see it- I don't know what made it so hard to write this chapter. I ended up doing the grand majority of it on paper, instead of on the computer, and then gave it to the wonderful Keistje to beta for fear I'd just delete the whole thing if I started editing it. --;; And I'm so irritated that my indents aren't taking anymore. WTF is up with that?

R for language and some blood. This one's pretty tame compared to some of the more recent ones. ONE MORE CHAPTER TO GO, PEOPLE. –heart!-

Review comments on the bottom.

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_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933  
_

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SECTION ELEVEN

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"Homura," Sanzo hissed, finger tightening on the trigger of his _shoreijyuu_, but the other man neither blinked nor looked in his direction.

To be honest, the priest had few encounters with the renegade god. Most of the times they met there were only a few seconds in which jibes were exchanged, and then after the fight began the war god was lost to his sight. The only expression he had ever seen on that eternally youthful face was arrogance (and perhaps once – Sanzo wasn't entirely sure he even saw it right – a touch of sadness back when the god had kidnapped Goku); to see a frown on that stern visage was strangely disconcerting. The mismatched eyes that were normally so mocking were instead strangely far away, lost in deep thought that had him looking _through_ the boy curled up in the corner, rather than _at_ him.

Sanzo risked a glance at the child in question. Goku had looked up at the unexpected sound as well, but he did not look at Homura with the level of anticipation that the older Goku he knew would have; instead, the look he gave the god was closer to tired recognition. With his face turned to the side, he could see the smear of blood that dripped down the boy's temple, a streak from coronet to jaw that looked suspiciously like it was drawn by trailing fingers. Perhaps by the mysterious person who had managed to suppress his murderous rampage as the _seiten taisei_?

He flicked his eyes back to the War Prince, but it didn't look like he had so much as twitched; he was still leaning casually on his sword, the chains connecting his wrists completely still. He must have been standing there for some time before the blonde had noticed his presence. _Why is he here?_ Sanzo wondered. _What part could he have in this dream?_

It didn't take much to dredge up the memory of Gojyo's mother, or of the demon that had entered his own nightmare. In this dream, then, Homura must be the tool of the _kyuuseishin_.

Considering how much of a pain in the ass he was to fight in real life, that thought did not give Sanzo much comfort.

He hesitated to drop his guard when the god was only ten feet away, but he did allow the barrel of his pistol to fall slightly as he turned once more to the young child. Goku was still staring toward Homura with wide eyes, scared but not so frightened as before.

"Goku," he said softly.

The strangely golden eyes blinked once, but the boy did not look over.

"Goku, listen to me. Everything in this room, everything you see, is nothing more than a dream. None of it is real. All you have to do is wake up, and all of this will end."

The child blinked again, and his eyes dropped from the figure standing silently in the center of the room to the white-clad corpse lying only a few feet away from them. "Just a dream," he echoed in a weak whisper. And then, his voice strengthening slightly: "More like a nightmare."

From the corner of his eye Sanzo saw Homura's face decline slightly, and in glancing over realized that he, too, had dropped his gaze to the same body. The white silk in a sea of black leather and blood had caught the priest's eye only briefly, but it had not been on his list of priorities to examine once he found the child he was looking for. Now, though, he looked as well – to the figure sprawled face down on the tile, long blonde hair stained and sticky with blood, one hand flung out toward the corner of the room, toward Goku, and wondered why it didn't catch his attention from the onset.

_The monkey king's diadem can only be made by the gods._ That was what Kanzeon Bosatsu had said after Goku had snapped his limiter during Rikudo's assault, or so Hakkai relayed. An interesting observation, considering that Sanzo was certainly no god. All the same... from the evidence presented, this was likely the god who had restored Goku's limiter after his massacre of the soldiers. How had he managed to get close enough to a cornered _seiten taisei_ in order to do so? And why, even though the god's face was turned away from him, did he get such a strangely uncomfortable feeling looking down on that corpse?

Sanzo looked away, ignoring the cold lump that formed in his stomach and threatened to make his nausea worse. This whole dream, memory of Goku's that it might be, was starting to get too surreal for his taste. He wanted out of this dream, this nightmare, as Goku rightly said. He wanted the kudzu to go ahead and show its cards so he could get this damn thing over and done with.

"You have to wake up, Goku," he said again, and this time the boy looked over at him. Sanzo wanted to kill the person who had made those eyes so haunted and empty.

"I wanna wake up so bad," the child whispered in reply.

"Then do it," the priest said, even though he knew it just wasn't that easy.

"But sometimes life is like a dream we cannot wake up from," Homura murmured from where he stood. So far he had shown no reaction whatsoever to Sanzo's presence, which made the blonde wonder who he was responding to. The god was still staring at the corpse as well, having not even glanced up to look at who he was addressing.

_- a constant, monotonous, sibilant hissing that assaulted his hearing and vibrated in his lungs, his very bones - _

"Sometimes," se said softly. "And sometimes the only way to face up to your fears and accept the course life has set for you... is to wake up."

The war god's eyes widened marginally, and he shifted to glance back to the entrance of the bloody room. Sanzo did not need to move in order to see who was speaking; that low alto voice was far too familiar for his liking. He could only recall having heard it once, mere days after first being introduced to the War Prince, but in some strange way it echoed in his bones with the comfortable ease of a person he had known for a long time. But he was very, very sure that this was only the second time he had laid eyes on the Merciful Goddess.

Kanzeon Bosatsu stood in the open doorway, on the outside looking in. Already the blood had begun to seep up the translucent silk of hir robes, but if this bothered hir se showed no sign of it. A small, almost sad smile darkened hir violet eyes. Se never once looked in the direction of Sanzo and the child he was guarding.

"Aren't you going to kill him?" se asked gently.

Goku seemed to shrink into himself at hir presence, crossing his arms defensively over his chest and drawing his knees in close again. It was a thoroughly depressing sight to see the boy he had always known as exuberant to act so... broken. Sanzo lowered his pistol completely and scooted forward the few feet that separated them, raising his free hand to rest it lightly on the tousled brown locks. This directed Goku's attention away from the gods, but the look Sanzo received was neither fear nor trust – but rather the look of a wounded animal that feared to trust again.

"I'm scared," the boy whispered.

The priest nodded, running his fingers through dark strands sticky with blood and sweat. "I know."

He turned to look back at the other two, who both ignored him as if he didn't even exist. Homura had been silent this whole time, staring at the goddess with the blank gaze of a man deep in thought. _Will it use him?_ Sanzo could not help but wonder. _Or the Merciful Goddess? Would I even be capable of defeating either of them?_ The only weapon he could use right now was his banishing gun, which had but five shots, and had proven to be ineffective against gods, anyways.

True, he had used the Maten-kyomen to banish the _kyuuseishin_ in his own nightmare, but the priest honestly didn't believe he had the strength left to cast it again. The thick, heavy scent of blood was nauseating – and when combined with the headache pounding in his temples and the exhaustion coiling through his muscles, it was all Sanzo could do not to faint or lose what was left of his lunch right there on the spot. He wasn't sure he could dredge up the energy to move, let alone defend both himself and Goku from the gods.

But other than the scripture, what choices did he have left?

"The word of the Jade Emperor is law," Homura said finally, but his voice lacked conviction.

"Indeed it is," Kanzeon agreed, "and yet you still hesitate. Why, Homura? Is it because you cannot bring yourself to kill a harmless child?"

"He is hardly harmless."

That sad smile widened somewhat, and se took a few steps into the room, lifting the skirts of hir robes to step over the corpses blocking the doorway. "True." Hir eyes dropped to the floor, and se knelt despite the blood staining the tiling. One long fingered hand came up to gently touch the shoulder of the black-haired insurgent Sanzo had noticed upon entering. "But when backed into a corner, what animal – or man – would not fight?"

The war god looked to the corpse, watched as se slowly stroked the worn, stained leather like se might caress a lover's face. "I'm not questioning the reasoning behind his actions. I'm questioning whether or not he should be allowed to remain alive."

"No, you're not." Se leaned over the corpse, placing one hand on the ground to brace hirself as se ran her fingers through the hair of the one man dressed in a lab coat – one now more red than white. A thick lock of hair fell over hir shoulder and trailed in the half-dried blood. "You're questioning whether or not you should obey the word of the Jade Emperor. Which is law, as you just said."

A soft noise escaped the boy across from him, and Sanzo felt him turn his head. He looked over, only to see Goku staring at the gods again. "The shadows are moving," he whispered.

"What sha – " he started, glancing up as well.

Shadows were creeping out of the corners of the room, from behind the impressive Buddha statue, from any place that the source-less light did not properly illuminate. They slithered down the blood-speckled walls and across the tiling, moving with the quick, jerky progress of questing snakes.

"And you, in turn, are questioning my loyalty?" was Homura's sharp reply.

The tendrils converged on the bodhisattva as Sanzo watched, but got not closer than a few inches; they pooled in a writhing mass around hir kneeling form, but every time a wisp would attempt to touch the goddess, it would jerk back, as though stung.

"Only your sense of justice," Kanzeon replied mildly.

Goku shifted again, scooting forward a little and pressing his head back against Sanzo's hand. He could feel the sharp edge of the circlet against his palm as he resumed stroking the child's hair.

"Grapes," the boy mumbled, and Sanzo realized he could smell it too – the over-powering scent of blood and death was still there, but underneath it he could barely make out the scent of grapes

_of kudzu blossoms_

and the grating rattle of hairy leaves rubbing together.

"I am..." The War Prince trailed off, as though uncertain how to word his thoughts. There was an undercurrent of sadness and hostility in his voice that Sanzo had never heard before. "... well aware... of the Jade Emperor's concept of justice."

"I know." Kanzeon rose to hir feet, and the black shadows of the _kyuuseishin_ drew away from hir presence with a wrathful hiss. It tried to gather in the space se left behind, but even those bloody tiles seemed anathema to it. "I do not mean to compare your justice to his."

"Then why ask?"

The bodhisattva glanced at him, then away again, and stepped across the room to the white-clad body only feet away from where Sanzo and Goku sat. Se passed so close to Homura that he was forced to step aside for hir, chains clinking loudly in the silence. The shadows tried to follow, but were repelled from every tile se had stepped only; even Homura, standing in hir wake, seemed unable to draw the _kyuuseishin_ past that invisible barrier.

Blood had soaked the goddess' translucent clothing clear up to hir thighs, smeared on hir calves and caked on her feet. The lock of hair that had fallen in a puddle of blood still dangled over hir shoulder; the silk was now stained red and clung wetly to hir left nipple. Goku drew back as Kanzeon approached, drawing even closer to Sanzo than before. The priest wrapped an arm around the narrow shoulders and drew the boy into the shield of his body.

Despite Goku's continued dependence on him (outside of pseudo-demonic influenced dreams), it had been a long time since they had shared any kind of embrace. Goku was growing older, and no longer needed the physical reassurance he had needed as a child. Even though the Goku in this dream did no more than rest his head against Sanzo's chest, it was the closest thing to a hug he had experienced in... years.

Although he had damned the boy for being a nuisance at the time, Sanzo had forgotten how much he missed those rare embraces.

The bodhisattva slowly knelt before them, at the side of the downed deity, and rested a not-quite-hesitant hand on the bloody back. Behind her, Homura continued to wait for an answer, the black mass of the kudzu vine swirling around his feet.

"You weren't there," se said softly, "to see why the Jade Emperor gave the order to kill that poor boy."

"I am forbidden to attend those meetings with the Emperor," Homura pointed out.

"I know." Se sifted hir fingers through the fine hair, that blood-splattered gold that reminded Sanzo disturbingly of his own.

"What point of enlightenment are you attempting to make me achieve, bodhisattva?"

Kanzeon gathered a lock of the long hair in one hand and gently stroked it with the other. Now that hir back was turned to the War Prince, there was a genuine look of grief in hir dark eyes.

"He was born of the earth," se said, "and the earth is older than Buddha. The Way created the dragons, and they, too, are older than Buddha. The great Buddha obeys the karmic law, for the karmic law is even older than the earth and the Way and the dragons. We must all obey the laws of karma. Even the Jade Emperor." Se glanced at the god over hir shoulder. "Do you understand?"

Sanzo couldn't say he followed the logic himself – although it would certainly help if he had a better grasp of the circumstances – but there seemed to be a spark of understanding in Homura's mismatched eyes.

"Then all of this," the god said slowly, "is nothing more than divine retribution? You saw this coming, and did nothing?"

Se let the pale gold locks slip from hir fingers. "Everything comes to a balance eventually. It is not my place to interfere with karmic law." Se sat back on hir heels and slowly pushed hirself to hir feet. "Nor is it yours."

The darkness hissed and snapped at the feet of the gods, roiling like a nest of disturbed snakes that demanded appeasement. And yet they remained unaffected, perhaps even oblivious, to the presence of the _kyuuseishin_. And, still, oblivious to Sanzo; both of the gods looked back to Goku, looking _through_ Sanzo, and again the sense of unreality returned.

When Kanzeon settled to hir knees again, at Sanzo's side, so close he could reach out and touch hir without hardly moving, the priest was struck with a sudden conflicting sense of indecisiveness. He had come into this dream to break the kudzu's grip on Goku, and to destroy the heaven's construct, but more and more he had to wonder – _is this, truly, a dream?_

In the center of the swirling mass of darkness, the War Prince turned away, resting his sword on his shoulder and closing his eyes. "Balance," he said, "sometimes needs a nudge in the right direction. But there is nothing to be done here. I can do nothing if you stopped the child first."

The bodhisattva's lips twitched into a smile, but it looked bitter. "Thank you, Homura."

The kudzu shrilled its anger as the war god walked out of the room without a word, chains jingling in the blood-soaked quiet, and Sanzo swore he heard the

_rattle of leaves grating together and branches clattering like dry bones_

man mutter something in response, but the words were lost.

And then the room was empty of all but a few living souls surrounded by a veritable graveyard.

"Goku," Kanzeon whispered in the near silence. "It's time to go."

Still pressed against Sanzo's chest, the boy shook his head violently, a small hand coming up to grab one sleeve in a white-knuckled grip. "I don't want to," he murmured against the priest's bamboo breastplate. "I don't want to go, I want to wake up."

"You will wake up," se promised gently. "But the time is not now. Night is the time for dreaming. You'll wake when it's daylight again."

Goku shivered and continued shaking his head, and again the buzzing swarm of fear rose in the back of Sanzo's mind. The nightmare tendrils of the _kyuuseishin_ pooled around them like so much blood, dripping backwards up the painted walls and oozing in the corners, but did not come close enough to touch.

When se touched his thigh, hir fingers were warm, and absurdly clean from blood. _Sahasra-bhuja, Kannon with-a-thousand-arms, each with an eye to symbolize the reaching out to those in distress__ – _the thought came to him, uncalled – a hand for each of the souls who prayed to her for compassion, for mercy. Those fingers were long and delicate, the nails manicured and painted. They looked very much unlike his own, but something in the delicate bones of the wrist, the deceptive strength in the tendons that ran under the pale skin, was hauntingly familiar.

When he lifted his gaze to hirs, it was almost like looking in a mirror – Sanzo had never seen eyes the same shade as his before, but there they were, staring back at him and reflecting a kind of sad, bitter, mocking smile. The lips weren't anything like his, either, but he recognized the wry twist in one corner of the mouth that could tinge any expression with muted anger.

Se was looking at him, seeing him, staring expectantly, and Sanzo realized –

_-__ this isn't a dream._

"It's time to go," Kanzeon repeated, and watched him as se said it, and didn't blink once.

Sanzo exhaled, slowly, feeling the stink of blood in his lungs (heavier than cigarette smoke), and found himself taking Goku by the shoulders and pushing the boy away. Goku resisted, leaning hard against the priest's hands, head lowered.

"I don't want to go," he repeated. "I _won't_ go."

"You have to," Sanzo replied. Unbidden, the memory of a mountain peak and centuries-old seals came to mind, fluttering paper scrawled with archaic script and yellowed with time to the same shade as a young boy's eyes.

"I _won't_," Goku repeated stubbornly. "I want to wake up, like you told me to. I want to... but... "

The priest looked back to the white-clad corpse, to the out-stretched hand – calloused from years of handling a pen, not a gun – but he could see himself in the set of the bones and the curve of the wrist.

He felt the weight against his hands lessen as Goku went limp. "It's dark," the boy whispered. "I can't wake up when it's so dark."

Sanzo looked down at the tousled brown locks, spiky with blood. He would never see Goku as a child again – he knew this now. He took the time to remember how small the boy used to be, how wiry and delicate the shoulders under his hands were now and never would be again.

It was a depressing realization.

"The sun won't set forever, Goku," Sanzo said softly.

The disheveled head jerked back, face lifting to bring a startled gold gaze to his. Sanzo took the time to memorize that, too; Goku's face would narrow in age from this point on, losing the childish plump in the cheeks, losing the softness of youth. He would never look like this again.

"You promise?" the child whispered, his gaze flitting from one of Sanzo's eyes to the other, searching for any hint of a lie.

He nodded, slowly. And he knew that, if he were given the choice of going back and changing his life... he would have trudged up that steep mountainside and extended his hand to a wide-eyed boy anyway. Even with all the pain and irritation that came from it. Even with all the baggage it burdened him with.

"I promise," Sanzo said.

When the bodhisattva reached between them and cupped Goku's cheek, the boy did not protest. He obediently allowed hir to turn his face to hirs, and said nothing when se gently stroked his temple with hir thumb.

"I promise, too," se said. "The sun will rise again."

Goku drew in a shuddering breath and nodded his head; the buzz of anxiety that spilled across the wire that bound him to Sanzo (and Sanzo to him) faded under the stubborn crush of resolve. "Okay."

Kanzeon smiled, a genuine one this time, and leaned forward, and pressed hir lips to the coronet that bound Goku's not-quite-demonic energy and kept the _seiten_ at bay.

- and the _kyuuseishin_ shrieked, a scream of shattering limbs and sap exploding in the fire, and Goku's eyes fell closed, and Sanzo swore his head was being ripped apart, shredded like nails down a chalkboard, Kanzeon's painted nails, but Kanzeon just smiled and held Goku's limp form to hir breast, and asked him –

_"Can you be - ?"_

- but then the room exploded, his mind slivered to pieces, and white light burnt his eyes and ears and Sanzo never heard the end of hir question.

---

It was raining when he opened his eyes this time, hissing and shushing like a roaring ocean beating itself on the rocks of the shore, but what fell on his shoulders and blew in his eyes was the dust and dried leaves of a decaying forest. The scent of tree silt shoved its way up his nostrils like (blood? why would it make him think of blood?) ashes from a disturbed fire, and his sinuses tightened in protest. But it was too dark to see clearly, so dark after the (light? what light?) brief second that passed during blinking, and Sanzo's weak human eyes could not keep up with the change.

"Sanzo?" he heard, weakly, and felt Goku shift in his grasp (when had he gone from running his fingers through the boy's hair to cradling Goku in his lap?), and remembered that the kudzu was all around them (how could he have forgotten?) and shuddering in the slow agony of death.

He had closed his eyes for just a moment, the heartbeat it took to blink, and Goku had woken. Where was the nightmare he had set out to wrest the boy from?

No – it was there, in front of him, the great twisted trunk of the _kyuuseishin_ trembling as it sought to bring its mobile limbs to bear, but Goku and he were still out of reach. The roots that had seeped their poison into Goku's veins were discarded and shriveled, and the vines overhead were shedding their leaves like rain as they died.

He forced his gaze to focus, forced his eyes to adjust, but there was so little light to see by (what happened to the moon?) even as the vines overhead broke under their own weight and exposed the cloudy sky above. The branches hit the ground in rustling crashes, spraying dust and twigs and leaves in their wake, and he felt Goku turn and press his face against the cloth of his robes to protect his eyes.

The _kyuuseishin_ was dying, and Sanzo hadn't done a thing.

_Can you be – ?_

He lifted the _shoreijyuu_ and emptied the chambers in the base of the gnarled trunk. Five shots was all it took before the vine finally stopped twitching.

---

Gojyo had already found his way back to the rough-packed road and persuaded Hakuryuu to change into his jeep form when Sanzo broke through the underbrush. Goku was dead weight in his arms, having passed out again after the kudzu was destroyed at the root; as light as the boy was, the extra weight made him stagger, and navigating his way through bushes that snagged his robes at every step was a hassle his exhausted body didn't need.

The red-head was leaning against the side of the jeep as Sanzo approached, the long strands that fell in his face fluttering with every breath. He looked as bad as the priest felt, and somewhere deep inside Sanzo was pleased the asshole hadn't gotten off lightly. But he couldn't even muster a smirk as he dumped Goku's limp form in the back seat alongside Hakkai.

"The monk and his monkey," Gojyo said from the opposite side of the vehicle. He hadn't even looked up from his perusal of his boots when Sanzo stepped onto the road. "How touching."

"Fuck you," the priest replied, but there was no heat in his voice. He couldn't collect enough energy to breathe properly, let alone fight with the obnoxious half-demon.

Maybe Gojyo knew that. Or maybe he was just as exhausted and didn't want to fight, either. When he finally lifted his head, it was only to transfer his gaze from his boots to the two unconscious men in the backseat. "You kill it?"

A good question. The kudzu had already been dying when he put five blessed bullets beneath the bark of its main stem. He just had no idea why it had gone from living to dying in the instant it took him to blink, when he hadn't even been given a chance to free Goku from its nightmarish grip.

"Yeah," Sanzo replied. Who cared if his bullets were the finishing blow or not? The _kyuuseishin_ was dead and rotting in the wilds around them. That was all that mattered.

That... and whether or not Goku would remember his dream (whatever he dreamed) when he woke up again.

The priest pushed himself away from the jeep, turning way from the vehicle and its inhabitants and the half-breed that watched over them. He was done with this place. One more battle won, one more day saved; it was high goddamned time he got a shower and a place to sleep. Sanzo didn't even care if said place was soft or not, so long as it was horizontal.

"You driving?" he asked, and stared down the road they had driven back when the sun was still high. At night it didn't look all that much different – just another dirt track through the woods, vanishing in the dark so many feet away. It was hard to believe this simple road had been surrounded by malevolent death only hours (less – it couldn't have been that long since he left the husk of the _kyuuseishin_ behind) before.

"Sure." Sanzo heard the scuff of heels in the dirt as Gojyo moved – but the footsteps stopped abruptly, then started again, hard and staccato, and Sanzo felt a hand on his arm that spun him around to meet Gojyo's piercing glare.

"What the fuck - ?!" he started, but then he realized the half-breed wasn't staring at _him_ so much as at his _robes_.

"What the hell happened?" the red-head demanded. "You're bleeding all _over_ the fucking place!"

"What?" Sanzo asked intelligently, then dropped his gaze as well.

His robes were literally saturated with blood from mid-thigh down, some of it caked and dried, some of it still wet and glistening black in the darkness, wet enough to have leaves and twigs and dirt stuck to it from his trek through the underbrush.

And on his left sleeve was smeared one tiny, perfect handprint.

---

_A/N:_

_(/mindfuck) -cackles insanely- I love this chapter. D_

**keistje: **_You are too good to me. Thank you so much for beta'ing this chapter for me. -snuzz- I promise the ending will be soon. –heart-_

**Eclispe45: **_-evil grin- I don't live far enough north in __Florida__ to see kudzu, but grape-vines have much the same effect on me. I want to see kudzu sooooo bad, but I'm afraid I might have spoiled any love for them by writing this fiction. –cackles insanely- I'm glad you liked! –heart-_

**Ouri**_: No worries for not commenting, I love you anyways. –heart- And yeah, who's watching does make a big difference on how Sanzo reacts, huh? He's far too concerned with his bad boy image. –tsk tsk-_

**kitsuni-oni**_: I'm glad you like the story so far! –heart- For your questions: Yeah, Sanzo got sucked into Gojyo's dream by touching skin-on-skin. If one person is already in a kudzu-dream, the second person can be drawn into their dream by touch alone. And, I don't think Homura is in the manga at all. I think he's restrained completely to the anime, except for one very short chapter that Minekura drew after the Gensomaden series had already ended. And in the anime they certainly don't have any time to sit down and chat over tea. :3 I'm so glad you consider this a fave. –blush- Hope you enjoyed this chapter, too!_

**Koinu****-Chan: **_-is poked- Well, this is a bit late in the coming, but I guess your poking me into finishing this chapter worked out in the end, right? :3 So glad you like!_

**Sanada: **_-evil laughter- I had so much fun writing that last chapter, and I have to admit that writing the scene leading up to Gojun was my most favorite part. I love the intricacies involved in Gaiden as well, and I'm pretty damn impatient in the waiting for Minekura to finish writing out what happened in Heaven five hundred years ago. –pokes her into finishing Gaiden- I know this comes two months after you asked me to hurry and update, but I hope you haven't given up on the story. –sweatdrop- Hope you enjoyed!_

**Me-Nuriko:**_ Glad you thought the same thing about Kenren's hair and eyes. –snerk- It is a little inconsistent between the anime and manga, isn't it? And I think one of the first shots of Tenpou in the anime has him with green hair. oO Ah well. And I like Homura too much to leave him out of the story, even if he has all the qualifications for a Marty Stue. –laughs insanely- So glad I'm able to describe this well enough you can really see it. Hope you like this chapter, too!_

**Merf**_: Unfortunately, Saiyuki Gaiden is incomplete. There are many fanon ideas of what happened at the end of Gaiden, but none of them can be picked as right or wrong because Minekura hasn't gotten off her ass to finish the Gaiden series yet. –snerk- I have a few different ideas myself, and this is just one of them. I'm going to write another Gaiden-ending in A King Reborn (whenever I get /that/ finished.... –sweatdrop-). A really good alternative ending to Gaiden is called 'Gaiden with a Difference', by incandesenc. She's such a good author. –heart- I can only hope that my stories can live up to that kind of standard. I hope you like this chapter as well as you've liked all the others. –heart-_

**sycscribe46: **_-blushing insanely- No nit-picks at all! That's such an incredible compliment! –heartheartheart- You are such a sweetheart, you know that? I'm so glad that you like this story, and took the time to let me know. Gives me the serious warm and fuzzies. –snuzz- I know this chapter is late in coming, but I hope it lives up to the rest of the standard this story has set. Thank you so much for your review! –heart!-_

**Mato-ko:**_ -laughing!- No worries, I'm not going to forget about this story! Sure, I'm probably going to get side-tracked again before I manage to finish the last chapter, but I'm not leaving this incomplete. You can rest assured there. –heart- Thank you for your kind comments, and I hope you like this chapter, too. :3_


	12. SECTION TWELVE

**Generic Disclaimer**: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they did. sigh...

And so, almost two months after my last update, I finish section twelve. In roughly seven months I've written a story 54,171 words long. The first time I have _ever _finished a multi-chaptered story. All I have to say is – I love you all for the support, and I probably never would have finished it if I didn't feel some kind of obligation to not leave you folks high and dry. Your kind remarks, the short ones, the long ones, the badly spelled ones, they all stroked my ego and fueled my inspiration, even when I was too tired from work and school to write. There are no review comments at the bottom of this chapter; all my thanks are up here.

This last chapter is for all of you.

Back down to PG-13, although it teeters on the edge of R due to language.

---

---

_italics_ indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

_"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."_

_ Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933_

_---_

_---  
_

SECTION TWELVE

---

---

The air was wet and humid, thick and heavy in his lungs. The sky was still mostly overcast, but at least it had stopped raining. To the west the clouds were gray and rose and dark purple, striations of bright to dark as the night closed in on the day. Occasionally gaps in the passing storm would let through the setting sun, and then the sky was painted a deep, fiery red.

It looked, Homura thought, as though the sky itself were bleeding.

The village beneath the lonely cliff he stood on was no different this coming night than it had been the night before, or even the night before that. From his vantage point it was hard to tell if the inhabitants even realized that the entire nature of the small valley they lived in had changed – all business carried on as usual, without the normal scurrying panic or at least mild interest that one would expect a village to show when the entire forest around them collapsed.

Where once the valley floor had been covered with a dark shadow that rippled under the light of the setting sun, now there was only the remains of a forest that looked almost as though it had been devastated by fire. Nothing remained but leaf debris and mere skeletons of the largest standing trees, the village untouched in the center of the ruin.

The sight was rather depressing, really.

He couldn't help but wonder how many people had wandered into the _kyuuseishin's_ trap over the years. How many human skeletons mingled with the skeletal fingers of the kudzu vines. How many actually survived to walk back into the village, gaunt and bewildered at the unseen passage of time. It was disgusting that the _kyuuseishin_ had even been created in the first place – but it was just another hypocrisy of the gods, another side of Heaven's flawed, faceted surface. He was glad that it had finally been destroyed.

And he was disgusted that he had even chosen to use the construct in the first place.

Shien would say nothing if Homura made such a confession. Zenon would only laugh at him. 'The means to an end,' the one-eyed god would say, and that would be that. But it wasn't that simple to Homura. A means to an end, yes, but there were some things he should never allow himself to stoop to just to succeed. He needed Son Goku to complete his plan to create the new world, but did he need to employ the use of one of Heaven's dirtiest creations in order to do so?

He heard the _shush_ of Shien's robes as the other god came up behind him, watched from his peripheral vision as the man came into his line of sight. His face was pointed down toward the village below as though he saw it, but his eyes, as usual, remained closed.

"They survived," the blind man said, unnecessarily.

Homura shifted his head just enough to view his companion with ease. "I'm aware of that," he replied neutrally. He had expected them to survive, naturally; Sanzo might be human, but he was a human with an unnaturally strong constitution. Homura would have been disappointed if the man had not made it out of the _kyuuseishin's_ grip alive.

Shien declined his head slightly. "Zenon has chosen to scout the area ahead for when they depart again. From their injuries, it will not likely be tomorrow."

"How far will the next village be, for them?"

"There is another one at the valley pass that they can reach in a day. Beyond that, Koton; at their usual rate of travel, the trip would take about three days."

He nodded and turned his gaze again to look down at the village. The lights were already on in the houses, and as he watched he could see the lamps along the main road being lit, one brightening after another in a winding line from south to north. The breeze blew in just the right direction for him to smell the smoke of their fires.

The _kyuuseishin_ had been growing here for hundreds of years, drawing its energy from the earth and sun and from what small creatures it could catch. But what kind of energy could be drawn from a simple bird or deer? Strong emotions heightened the output of adrenaline, raised the strength of one's _chi_, but a small animal could only last so long before the elongated state of fear would kill it. What a sudden windfall it must have been when the first settlement came to this valley, when the first fingers of the Minus Wave crept down over the mountainside. It could have easily doubled in size in the last ten years from the Minus Wave alone; that a tiny sprig no longer than his palm could have grown to the size of this monster in only a few hundred years was hard to imagine.

Homura wondered what idiot had allowed the construct to take root here in the first place. He mildly hoped that whoever did so had died by his sword when he left Heaven. The death would not balance the destruction that had been wrought by this beast, but at least there would be some justice to it all.

"Will Son Goku regain his memories?" Shien's voice was pitched low and was almost hard to hear when he broke the silence again.

"No. The effect was not strong enough." And such a failure made his use of the _kyuuseishin_ even worse, in Homura's eyes; the means to the end, perhaps, but a means that ultimately served no purpose. He should have never sought to use it to jar Goku's memories loose. The use made him no better than the gods in the distant past who used it to kill those who stood in their way to power.

He should have known that Kanzeon's seals would be strong enough to out-last such a pathetic assault.

And yet, if Sanzo's party had passed through the woods unmolested, the _kyuuseishin_ would still exist now, and those few poor souls who had survived to walk back to their village would still be rotting in its green embrace. And how many more would have succumbed to its nightmares in the future, before Homura could destroy this world to make way for the new one?

"… it has served its purpose, then," the other god said quietly.

"To make them face their fears?" Homura shrugged. The chains around his wrists swayed and clinked with the movement, but he was so used to their presence that the sound hardly even registered. "That remains to be seen."

"Even so." Shien declined his head further, then stepped back and disappeared from Homura's peripheral vision. "Such an encounter serves to make them all stronger. And the death of the _kyuuseishin_ serves as one more victory against Heaven."

The blind god's retreat was more silent than his arrival, but Homura could feel his departure all the same, leaving him alone again on the cliff top. The sun was almost gone now, the mountains turning black again, the departing mass of the storm hiding the stars from view. The village below was only visible by the tiny specks of the street lamps and the windows of the brightly lit homes.

_Which one of those windows do you sit behind, Son Goku?_ he wondered. _Do you look at the setting sun and wonder what happened to the time between now and when I drove you into the forest? Does the not-knowing remind you of your lonely mountain peak?_

Shien was right; destroying the _kyuuseishin_ was a victory against Heaven, even if it had not served the purpose Homura initially intended for it. This was not a defeat, merely a short sidetrack of time. If he wanted to delude himself, he could even say that he had not used the construct to try and unseal Goku's memories, but had rather used the Sanzo party to destroy the construct – releasing Goku's memories would have simply been a possible, useful side-effect.

He smiled wryly at the thought. Zenon would call him a piss-poor liar if he said such a thing aloud.

When the sun had finally slipped far enough below the edge of the mountains that even the clouds had gone dark from the night, Homura turned away from the sight of the village below. In the morning the party he was tracking would continue on, or else pause another day for well-deserved rest and recuperation. When they did move on again, passing down that tree-littered track to the village beyond the edge of the once-forest, he would not be there waiting for them. This was enough conflict to last them a while; he would return to Konran Tower and await Zenon's report on the area ahead. There was plenty of time before he would need to take what he needed by force. For now, he was content to let the Sanzo party continue at their own pace.

This was not a failed venture; Homura did not need Goku to have his memories in order to create the new world. And despite how the knowledge would serve his cause, Homura did not really _want_ Goku to remember his time in Heaven.

Sometimes ignorance truly was bliss.

---

It was an unspoken rule that when the four of them were forced to share a room, Sanzo always got the window. But the only window in the cramped room they had gotten was right above the single bed – one that had been occupied by Goku and Hakkai throughout much of the day. So, Sanzo didn't get the window. He took over the table in the corner instead, graciously leaving Gojyo the floor.

He crushed another cigarette against the rough grain of the table top, letting it join the small pile growing over to the side. Sleeping most of the day had done nothing to ease his mood; in fact, the blonde was fairly certain that his mood had only soured. This could probably be blamed on the rain – even though he had not been awake to hear the drops splattering on the roof above, he had no doubt that the sound still penetrated his sub-conscious, infiltrating his sleep and darkening his dreams with the color of blood.

He could not remember those dreams when he woke to the storm-filtered noonday sun. Considering the events of the night before, he was quite relieved by the lack of remembrance.

Sanzo shook out another cigarette, crumbling up the empty package and tossing it at the back of Gojyo's head, where he slept on the floor. Unsurprisingly, the _kappa_ did not wake. Normally the man was one of the first to get back on his feet after the kind of beating they took – after Goku, of course – but the kudzu's poison and the blood loss had taken as much of a toll on him as it had on everyone else.

Sanzo supposed he should be grateful that the half-breed had even stayed conscious long enough to drive them back to the inn, but he wasn't in much of a mood to be grateful. Gojyo could have at least made it up the stairs before he passed out. Then the priest would have only had to drag two party members to their room, instead of three. But no, the red-head had made it through three hours of driving while Sanzo knelt over the back of his seat to crudely bandage the wounds of the other two, only to put the jeep in park and announce, "We're here," before abruptly fainting against the wheel.

The bastard.

At least the blaring of Hakuryuu's horn had convinced the innkeeper's son to help Sanzo carry Gojyo up the stairs. Had he been forced to do it by himself, he would have dragged the man up by his feet. The damage done by bouncing his head off every step might have even knocked something in Gojyo's head back in place. Maybe.

Gojyo had probably passed out just to piss him off, but that was a fairly minor irritation. Dealing with the innkeeper had been worse – the tiny inn had only two rooms, and they had been lucky enough to get both rooms the night before. But, as fate would have it, one of the rooms had been booked after they left, and no figure Sanzo could name would convince the woman who owned the shack to kick the inhabitants out at two o'clock in the morning. Nothing had convinced her to drag out the futons, either (damned if he had been too exhausted to think of his gun). So he had been forced to sleep on the floor after depositing Goku and Hakkai on the bed, and he _still_ had a cramp between his shoulder blades. He ignored the ashtray sitting in the middle of the table out of spite.

The bitch.

Some small good had come out of their conflict with the _kyuuseishin_, at least. When Gojyo had finally woken back up and gone downstairs to order food, he had brought back the news that at least three people had wandered out of the mess they had left behind, emaciated and exhausted but still alive. Haunted, no doubt, by the nightmares they had been forced to relive – one of them had apparently been missing for almost five days – but back on the road to recovery. The local doctor had nothing with which to combat the remnants of the kudzu vine's poison, but enough sleep and rest would set them on their feet again.

If they felt anything like Sanzo did, they probably never wanted to sleep another day in their lives.

He had only been awake for about five hours, but exhaustion still sat heavy on his bones, worsened by the food sitting in his stomach and the nicotine circulating through his veins. Hakkai had already told him – multiple times – to go back to sleep, now that the futons had been brought up, but he resisted the notion. The priest had no idea how Gojyo could go back to sleep so willingly after the dream Sanzo had witnessed. But maybe it was something he had gotten used to, a dream that came so frequently that he no longer even twitched when he woke from it.

The bastard.

At least the half-breed had left his lighter on the table, rather than re-appropriating it after supper. For that alone Sanzo could thank him.

Once the new cigarette was lit, safely tucked between the fingers of his left hand, he rested his elbow on the tabletop, chin settled on the back of his wrist. He could see the distant mountainside through the window from his corner of the room, the light of the setting sun staining everything a shade of red. Even Hakkai's spare glasses reflected the light (he had been rather sore at the loss of his monocle), and it gave him an eerie look as he sat on the bed and checked Goku's bandages.

He wondered what Hakkai thought of sleeping now. Whether he thought the act of closing his eyes and surrendering to dreams once more was repulsive or not. The look on his face had been serene enough when he gave the order, but he hadn't looked too surprised when Sanzo had refused. It was hard to tell what the other man thought, even now, even after so many years of knowing him and so much time on the road, sharing so much of his personal space. The blonde supposed he should be used to that by now, but sometimes he still found it disturbing.

Sanzo was not surprised, however, by the healer's insistence that he check everyone's wounds, even when the local doctor had done that adequately enough and he could hardly stand without listing. All they really had, besides the remnants of the poison, was a bunch of scratches and bruises (save for Hakuryuu, who had miraculously escaped any and all harm, the ungrateful beast) – but Hakkai saw every wound as one done to his own body. Serious wounds that needed tending before the minor scrapes – before his own injuries. Even if the effort of tending and healing was so great that he passed out in the process.

The idiot.

Fuck, what was he talking about? They were _all_ idiots. Stupid bastards, the lot of them.

"You do half my work for me, Goku," Hakkai said pleasantly. Which was true; the blemish on Goku's throat (the sight of which had prompted Gojyo to ask if the monkey had been caught necking with the kudzu – it had taken more than one bullet to separate the two, that time) and the matching ones that littered his torso and arms all looked considerably fainter now than when he had first awoken.

Pity the memento the _kyuuseishin_ left Sanzo didn't fade so quickly. The physical, or the mental.

He stuck the cigarette back between his lips and let it dangle there, smoke drifting up his nose and stinging his eyes.

There were still a lot of things the priest didn't understand, even if he was loathe to admit it out loud. Things about Gojyo, things about Hakkai. Things about Goku. How they bounced back so fast from things that would have laid a weaker man flat on his back. Things that would have laid _him_ flat on his back if he wasn't so goddamned stubborn. Not the physical wounds – they were demons, at least partially so, of course they would heal faster – but the mental wounds, the ones that gaped open, raw and bleeding, rotting and festering in the darkness of denial. The kind of pestilent cysts that only burst open and leaked their rank fluid when the sun had fled from the skies.

Sanzo wanted to know how Hakkai could order him to sleep so casually, as though he hadn't just witnessed his sister and lover murder herself again, in a nightmare that was closer to reality than was comfortable. The blonde had always wondered, morbidly, if she had stabbed herself in the stomach, in unconscious fury at the monster who put the half-breed in her womb, or slit her throat, in unconscious fury at herself for being too weak to resist. He wondered, because he knew that was what Hakkai had seen while in the grasp of the kudzu, knew because of the haunted, dead light in the back of those green eyes that made the healer as much the walking dead as the sister he carried in the back of his mind.

Sanzo wanted to know how Gojyo could sleep so easily, as though he hadn't been in a house that had once been neat and tidy but had ended up torn apart and twisted, like the mind of the mother he had wanted so desperately to love him. And even Sanzo, bitter as he was, could understand a child's need for love, because he had been there once or twice as a child himself, even if he couldn't remember it so well. How frightening could it be, to know that your own mother, even if she hadn't been the one to carry you in her womb for nine months, could hate you so much as to try and kill you? That you had a face only a mother could love, but mother didn't love you, she wanted you dead, as dead as an axe with a four-foot-long handle could make you?

He wanted to know… why Goku didn't remember his dream when everyone else did.

There was no reason not to believe the boy. If Gojyo or Hakkai had claimed they had no remembrance, they would have been lying, and he would have known it even if he heard the statement second-hand. Things like that just couldn't lied about and gotten away with.

But Goku… if he had been lying, he would have been stammering instead of looking mildly confused. The kid just didn't grasp the concept of dishonesty. Or, if he had finally caught on and mastered his first lie, he would have gotten that quiet, distant look about him later on, the way he got when he was thinking about Mount Gogyo, the way he used to get whenever it snowed. That introverted, _haunted_ look that seemed so out-of-place on him when it was so natural on Hakkai or Gojyo or on the priest himself.

Goku honestly, truthfully, didn't remember what he had dreamed.

What disturbed Sanzo the most about this was that he couldn't remember the dream, either.

It had only taken a touch to get drawn into Gojyo's dream, and he remembered that vividly, as vividly as he remembered his own. And Homura had taunted him, had told him he would find out whether or not Goku would remain the same person if he regained his memories. Had all but triple-dog-dared him to enter the kudzu's nightmare and find out the truth himself.

But he had touched the boy, and closed his eyes, and there had been… nothing.

That wasn't the truth, either. _Something_ had happened, Sanzo just didn't know what. Careful inspection of the facts told him this:

The kudzu had been fairly calm before he closed his eyes; it was in its death-throes when he opened them again.

He had simply been stroking Goku's hair when he closed his eyes; when he opened them again the boy was half-cradled in his lap.

The moon was bright before and hidden by encroaching storm-clouds after.

Goku's _nyoi-bou_ had been there before and was gone after.

The way his robes had been soaked with blood after he opened his eyes again, when neither he nor Goku had suffered a major injury. So much blood that when Hakkai replaced the robes back in the bin for their second soaking, he had advised picking up another set the next time they visited a monastery.

Neither of them remembered the dream, and Sanzo _didn't know why_.

He had every reason to be disturbed by this, he felt.

"If you're not going to use the ashtray," Hakkai said absently, "you could at least try not to get the ashes all over yourself."

The priest removed himself from his thoughts and plucked the cigarette from his lips, careful not to burn himself on the cherry so close to the filter. There was only one lungful left on this one, and he sucked it in regretfully before crushing the remainder against the table top.

Now he was tired, confused, irritated, _and_ he had no more cigarettes. Beautiful.

The room remained quiet as the sun finished sliding down behind the mountains. Sanzo glared at the pile of ashes, listening as Hakkai eased himself off the bed and began to put away their meager medical supplies. He ran a finger along the grain of the table, staring at the grit that built up beneath his nail. Sanzo wanted to sleep, but he _couldn't_ sleep, even when he knew that the _kyuuseishin_ was dead, even when he knew that Homura had been thwarted in his attempt to unseal Goku's memories. He had thought that, as unbearable as his dreams of that night in the Kinzan Temple were, there was nothing else he could dream of that could possibly be worse.

He had been so very, very wrong.

Even if the nightmare the kudzu had shown him was hardly any different from the one that he had dreamt of so often lately, it had still been more real, more stark in its blacks and whites and more vivid in its underlying scent of ozone and blood. He didn't want to close his eyes and be brought back to that smashed temple room with the mud on the shattered rice-paper screening and the black, shadowed face with the burning blue eyes that knew nothing but _hunger_…

Sanzo fucking envied Gojyo and the way he slept so easily again. Envied Hakkai and the way he could internalize his torment so well that one could never see how hollow he had become. Envied Goku and the way he couldn't remember what dream the _kyuuseishin_ had visited on him.

Fuck, he hated them so _much_ right now.

The bedsprings creaked as Hakkai sat down again, tucking one leg underneath him to avoid touching Goku. The boy obligingly slid closer to the window to make room.

"So much red," the older man said softly. So softly Sanzo doubted he meant to say anything aloud in the first place. "It almost looks as though the sun is dying."

_The sun _is_ dying_, the priest thought sourly. _The sun is dying and bleeding like a stuck pig, and no matter how much we hate the dark we can't stop it from coming._

He needed another cigarette. Or a beer. Or both. Actually, he needed one of the sedatives Hakkai kept carefully wrapped in a small, unlabeled glass bottle, because he was never going to get any more rest otherwise. He scowled at the table top.

"...but it's okay," Goku said softly.

Sanzo looked up from the table, towards the boy, and saw Hakkai shift his gaze as well.

"What is?" Hakkai asked, prompting the brunette to explain the unformed thought he had voiced aloud.

"It's okay." He turned his face toward the healer, the reddish light of the sunset reflecting off the coronet encircling his brow. "It's okay, because… the sun doesn't set forever, you know?"

_The sun won't set forever, Goku._

Hakkai stared for a moment, then smiled. But because of the light reflecting off the lenses of his spare glasses, Sanzo could not see if it was a real smile or not.

"You're right," he said softly, and looked out the window once more, out to the mountains towards which they would begin traveling again soon. "It is okay."

_I promise, too. The sun will rise again. _

_You're wrong_, Sanzo wanted to say. _You're both wrong. It's not okay, it never has been okay, and it never will be okay. The sun might rise, but it always sets again, too._ But his throat had seized tight with some emotion dangerously close to fear, and he dug his nails into his palms instead of saying anything out loud.

He didn't want to think any more. He just wanted to sleep, and not dream. Anything but dream.

_Can you be this little one's sun?_

That night Sanzo convinced Hakkai to pass out the sedative so carefully hoarded, and when he slept, he dreamt of nothing.

---

Three days later they left the town and its decimated forest, tires crushing the remains of the vine that had not yet rotted beneath the harsh rays of the sun. By the time the sun set again they had left the valley and were back beneath the roof of another inn. And when they slept, they dreamed.

Sanzo dreamed of endless white corridors and bright walls stained dark with blood. Even in the state of dreaming he knew it should remind him of something, knew that it had a significance that he should peruse further upon waking. Knew that he needed to remember it.

But by the time the sun rose again, Sanzo had forgotten.

---

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owari

5/28/04 – 12/21/04  
edited for errors on 12/31/04


End file.
